Georgia Business Climate or Money Laundering 101

Watch out poor Georgia, the handwriting was on the wall!!!

Joni Simonshvili

The British Virgin Islands has come from nowhere to be the 3rd highest investor in Georgia. Sounds a bit strange - could be legit, but it could be money laundering or a shell game in pumping in borrowed money from the West to support a regime that appears to be crashing and burning. It takes no mental giant or the Man from Uncle to understand where cometh the money flows. Just beg the question as what are the main exports of Georgia – guns, drugs and human resources. It has become a real brain drain; it is getting-worst-by-the-day – where foreign experts from Asia and Africa will have to come in to fill in the void.

Wonder where that money is from, Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, percentage on the drug and undocumented oil transit, and where doe the money go? This is the stuff that dreams on the Batumi shoreline are made of, and whilst the media, such as the New York Times and CNN talk about foreign direct investment, how great is the tourist beat, and how Georgia becoming like Dubai, (not a very good role model), one only need to dig a bit deeper.

Just look and see how money is now being exported from Dubai to safer havens, in expectation of the pending financial regional meltdown, and that will affect the cash cow that has been keeping Georgia afloat in recent years.

Gee whiz – nobody saw it coming, just like subprime loses. Watch out poor Georgia, the handwriting was on the wall!!!

http://www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=22667

Inflow of foreign direct investment grew 11% year-to-year in second quarter of 2010 to USD 196.9 million, according to preliminary figures released by the statistics office, Geostat, on September 14.

FDI for first half of 2010 totaled USD 272.6 mln, down 6.38% year-to-year, according to preliminary figures.

The Netherlands was the largest investor in the second quarter, 2010 with USD 77 million, followed by the United States with USD 42 million; the British Virgin Islands, an offshore financial center, with USD 32 million and Japan – USD 18 million.

It is not good business to subside a country with ill-gotten funding – actually it encourages criminality and corrupt government, and already the Georgian government is in hock up to its eye balls – and only by outside support and a transfusion of political cash is the country still listed as country.

I am just thinking out loud, and I am not the first, the claim of economic boom has been voiced before, however, for Georgia, as reported in an Article in 2009, "this has been more a well-crafted PR than actual reality. As Irakli Rukhadze wrote, and even considering the source, Salford Georgia, Georgians have been mislead, cheated and abused by their leaders ... and trust has been lost - and with [trust goes investment climate] ....

PR alone, no matter how well-crafted, doesn't get the job done.

--