RMG GOLD employees donate huge sum of money to ruling Georgian Dream Party

The ruling Georgian Dream Party received more than 4,700,000 lari (about $1,500,000) in donations from around 240 people in 2020. A study by the Institute for the Development of Free Information (IDFI) revealed that employees from the same company often donate money to the same cause. Moreover, many of them are ordinary employees who do not occupy leadership positions.

IDFI claims that this is a common practice in Georgia: as a rule, these companies are giving money to the ruling party, and in order to avoid legal issues, the sum is made out as a donation by several people, as the law prohibits donations larger than 120,000 lari to political parties.

• Relative of head of Georgian ruling party has received more than $5 mln from budget since 2014

The Georgian Dream received hundreds of thousands of laris from employees of Responsible Mining Solutions (RMS) GOLD.

This year alone, the company donated more than 800,000 lari to the ruling party through 20 employees, both top managers and regular workers.

IDFI believes that past donations made to the party by RMG GOLD should be audited.