Tbilisi City Court imposed over GEL 635,000 on sixteen people after approving on August 10 a decision by the State Audit Office (SAO), which has claimed that these individuals had failed to justify legitimacy of funds they contributed to the Georgian Dream opposition coalition, led by Bidzina Ivanishvili.

Fines imposed on each vary from minimum GEL 6,000 to GEL 166,720 depending on an amount of donation, which the court and SAO deemed as illegal. Imposed fines are five times the amount of each donation.

Among sixteen donors, fined on August 10, eight are employees of Ivanishvili-affiliated Tbilisi-based Cartu Bank, including bank’s director general Nodar Javakhishvili, who has been fined with GEL 85,000.

“I have donated GEL 17,000 out of GEL 20,000 which I received as a compensation for being sacked by the bank’s temporary manager [who took over the bank for two weeks last month] and they [the authorities] now tell me that I have failed to justify this income,” Javakhishvili said after the court hearing.

Total amount of donation, which made by sixteen individuals and which was deemed as illegal by the court and SAO, was GEL 127,143.

In early July the Tbilisi City Court imposed total of GEL 1.17 million on seventeen people after thier donations to various political parties, mainly to those united in the Georgian Dream coalition, was deemed illegal. Property of some of those individuals has been seized and auctioned after their failure to pay the fine.