Azernews.Az

By Nazrin Gadimova

Financial Monitoring Service of the Georgian parties charges that President Mikheil Saakashvili's United National Movement received considerable illegal donations during the election campaign, and has sought investigation of the issue in the Prosecutor's Office.

A statement in this regard has been made by the head of the Financial Monitoring Service Zurab Aznaurashvili.

"As a result of the study of materials which the Service obtained from the Prosecutor's Office, the Financial Monitoring Service revealed that the UNM used funds provided for employment programs for party purposes in circumvention of the law and received illegal donations in the amount of 5,240,880 lari (about $3,176,290)," Aznaurashvili said.

Aznaurashvili said the social service agency carried out registration of labor agreements with 21,837 persons under the employment program in 2012. He says they did pre-election work for the party, and there was disregard of the purposes outlined by the employment program, and the funds provided for the program were directed to the purposes of the UNM's election campaign.

The 2013 presidential election in Georgia is scheduled for October. This will be the 6th presidential election after the country's declaration of independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. The last one, held on January 5, 2008, resulted in the election of Mikheil Saakashvili for his second and final presidential term. According to the Constitution, Saakashvili cannot run for a third consecutive term.