Georgian elections: how much money have parties received for election campaigns

With one day remaining before the parliamentary elections, Transparency International-Georgia has published a report on campaign funding, covering the period from January 1 to October 15.

Main points of the report:

48 parties and 2 electoral blocs are participating in the elections, of which 29 of them have received financial donations;

• In total, all parties together received about 35 million lari (about $10.9 million) as donations for the parliamentary elections 
• Most of them are donations to the ruling Georgian Dream party – just over 17 million lari ($5.25 million). This sum amounts to 48% of the total donations from all electoral subjects
• The runner-up is the opposition party Lelo – slightly over 5 million lari (about 1.5 million dollars)
• In the third place is the electoral bloc United National Movement – United Opposition. Strength is in unity. The parties in this bloc received a total of approximately 3.7 million lari ($1.14 million).

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According to Transparency International, companies affiliated with donors to the ruling party won public procurement tenders worth about 47 million lari ($14.5 million) by October 1, 2020, paying 1.3 million lari ($400,000) as donations to the party.

The study highlights the G&K Technology company, which won tenders for 17.2 million lari over the year, whose owner Roman Abramishvili donated 60,000 lari to the Georgian Dream.

According to the report, over the past years, several large groups have formed among the donors of the ruling party, which fund the Georgian Dream with large sums of money in almost all elections.