The Esia Group company that is connected with the Beridze brothers, high-ranking public officials in Adjara, has received GEL 5,344,077 from public procurements in the years 2021-2024. TI Georgia published the first study on this topic in June 2023, and, by that time, the company had received a revenue of up to GEL 1,900,000 from public procurements. TI Georgia has also established that Esia Group performed the works worth GEL 1,716,998 as a subcontractor during the construction of a stadium in Shuakhevi, and the public agencies didn’t confirm this fact at the time of the previous study. And in the past eight months, the company received an additional GEL 1,757,332 from tenders and public procurements. 

What is the connection between Esia Group and the Beridze brothers? 

Akaki Beridze is the head of the municipal legal entity of Batumi with the biggest budget, the Division of Urban Infrastructure and Improvements. Prior to that, he was the owner of a 33% stake and director of RB-Akhali Gza LLC. Co-owners of stake in the company were Irakli Aznaurishvili (34%) and Valeri Adonia (33%). In 2017, Akaki Beridze resigned from the director’s position, sold his stake for GEL 100, and later worked as an engineer at the Anagi company and Adjara Waste Management Company LLC, which is owned by the Government of Adjara; in 2021, he was appointed first as the deputy director and, from December, as the director of the Division of Urban Infrastructure and Improvements of Batumi. 

A former business partner of Beridze, Irakli Azraurishvili, founded Esia Group in June 2018. Esia Group LLC and RB-Akhali Gza LLC are registered at the same address – 21 B.4 Tbel Abuseridze Street, Batumi. 

Esia Group has been participating in public procurements since the summer of 2021. At that time, Akaki Beridze’s brother, Roland Beridze, was the First Deputy Mayor of the Keda Municipality. The company was awarded the first subcontractor agreement in July of the same year. According to the results of the 2021 elections, Roland Beridze became the Mayor of the Keda Municipality, and one more brother, Raul Beridze, has been the First Deputy Head of the Roads Department of Adjara since 2017. The fact that Esia Group was a subcontractor could be identified from the procurements of precisely these three public procuring organizations – the City Hall of the Keda Municipality, the Roads Department of Adjara, and the Division of Urban Infrastructure and Improvements of Batumi.    

The revenue from public procurements in the past eight months 

Similarly to the previous period, the City Hall of the Keda Municipality and the municipal division of Batumi have continued their business relations with Esia Group; Waste Management Company of Adjara, in which Akaki Beridze worked for years, also awarded a large procurement contract to the company. In total, the company received GEL 1,757,332 from 5 procurements; in 3 cases, the contracts were awarded by the Keda City Hall, and Waste Management Company of Adjara and the Division of Urban Infrastructure and Improvements of Batumi awarded 1 contract each. Fifty-four percent of the amount (GEL 955,808) was received through non-competitive tenders and those won by disqualification of competitors. 

Participation in the construction of the Shuakhevi stadium 

At the time of preparation of the previous study, Adjara Project Management Company, a limited liability company owned by the Government of Adjara, failed to provide us with information on whether or not Esia Group was a subcontractor in the construction of the stadium in Shuakhevi, in which the Global Standartmsheni company had won the tender without competition. We began to have a well-founded doubt that Esia Group was a subcontractor when we studied the Facebook page of the company. At that time, those at Adjara Project Management Company told us that the supplier organization had not provided information on the existence of a subcontractor, which clearly points to inadequate control over the obligations taken by the contract, which creates additional risks of corruption.

After the publication of the study, the company also submitted the subcontractor agreement with Global Standartmsheni for the construction of the Shuakhevi stadium along with other contracts, in order to confirm its experience in public procurements. It turned out that 89% (with a value of GEL 1,716,998) of the works worth GEL 1,922,123 had been performed precisely by Esia Group.

It is unclear why the limited liability company owned by the Government of Adjara, as the procuring organization, didn’t have information about the existence of a subcontractor, especially when almost 90% of the works were performed by this subcontractor. Both circumstances raise questions about risks of corruption. 

In total, it follows that in the years 2021-2024 the company connected with the Beridze brothers has received GEL 5,344,077 from the public procurements of the Keda Municipality, the project and Waste Management Companies owned by the Government of Adjara, and the Division of Urban Infrastructure and Improvements of Batumi, including GEL 3,568,745 received through a subcontractor agreement and GEL 955,808 received from tenders won without competition and by disqualification of competitors.  

We call upon the Anti-Corruption Agency of the State Security Service to launch an investigation on the basis of the obtained information in order to reveal possible corruption in the public procurements described above.