Some of the 18 buildings on the hospital grounds are decrepit. Photo by: George Gogua

By Tsira Gvasalia

The largest pharmaceutical company in the Republic of Georgia has big plans for a choice piece of property it bought five years ago at a bargain price.

In 2009, Aversi-Pharma snapped up a huge Soviet-era hospital complex in Tbilisi when the National Agency for State Property Management conducted a privatization auction. For US$12.5 million, Aversi-Pharma bought 58,175 square meters of land and the 18 buildings on it.

Stark lights illuminate rock formations inside the Prometheus Cave in Georgia. Ecologists say the lights may be damaging the delicate environment.

By Nino Bakradze

A move by the Saakashvili government to redo a lighting and sound system in an environmentally sensitive cave is leaving many in the dark. The move, which may be damaging the cave’s delicate ecosystem, also appears to have drained the state budget unnecessarily.

It may just come down to politics.

Armen Sandadze pulls a fishing line into his inflatable rubber boat. Since it was slashed, it leaks and he can't go far from shore. Photo by Nana.

By Nana Naskidashvili, Studio Monitori

Armen Sandaze’s house looks out on Lake Tabatskuri, a high alpine lake that is one of the deepest and most beautiful in the Republic of Georgia.

Sandaze, 43, used to make his living as a fisherman there, like many others in the twin lakeside villages of Tabatskuri and Moliti. For more than 20 years, he rowed out onto the lake to support his family.

But now it is illegal.

A new US$6 billion private “co-investment” fund to stimulate investment in Georgia is not providing enough information about its oversight, its investors, or how it plans to spend its money, says Transparency International-Georgia (TI).

The news that Swedish telecom giant Ericsson provided the “black box” technology used by the Georgian government to spy on its own citizens did not appear to disturb the status quo Thursday (Oct. 31) at the Georgian Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA).

French authorities arrested Davit Kezerashvili, former Defense Minister of the Republic of Georgia, in the southern city of Nice on Monday. A French court ordered the detention of Kezerashvili, whose extradition is sought by the Georgian government, according to the news website Civil Georgia.

Georgian Ministry of Internal Affairs employee feeds a surveillance CD into the shredder.

By Elza Ketsbaia

After months of dithering over what to do with thousands of secret sex videos, Georgian officials on Sept. 5 fed 145 compact discs containing the illegal recordings of citizens’ sex lives into a high-powered shredder.

Some 100 people, most journalists, watched the destruction in a large auditorium at the Ministry of Internal Affairs.