Georgian investigators search US tech company offices, homes of nonprofit workers, local media reports
PHOTO CAPTION: Illustrative photo — Law enforcement officers are seen in the town of Zugdidi, Georgia, Oct. 21, 2020. REUTERS/Stringer
TBILISI (Reuters) - Georgian authorities on Thursday raided the local offices of U.S. technology services company Concentrix and searched the homes of two employees of the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based think tank, Georgian media reported.
The searches took place two days before a parliamentary election widely viewed as a test of whether the South Caucasus country returns to Moscow's orbit or maintains its traditional pro-Western orientation.
Georgia's four main opposition parties are aiming to deprive the ruling Georgian Dream party of its constitutional majority, while Georgian Dream's billionaire founder Bidzina Ivanishvili has vowed to ban opposition parties if his group clinches victory on Saturday.
Georgia's Interpress news agency said that members of the Finance Ministry's investigative arm had entered Concentrix's office complex in Tbilisi on Thursday and were conducting a search.
The California-based company did not immediately reply to a request for comment outside of working hours.
Separately, Georgian investigators searched the homes and offices of two non-profit workers who conduct research on Russian disinformation in the Caucasus, Interpress reported on Thursday, citing the husband of one of them.
Sopo Gelava and Eto Buziashvili are both Tbilisi-based researchers at the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab, which studies global disinformation efforts.
They were not available for comment on Thursday. The Atlantic Council did not immediately reply to a comment request.
Gelava's husband, Giorgi Noniashvili, a member of the pro-Western Federalists opposition party which is not taking part in the election, told Interpress that the family's electronic devices had been seized during the search.
"In a situation where the government is putting a lot of pressure on civil society (the search) raises a lot of question marks, especially three days before the elections," Interpress cited Noniashvili as saying.
Relations between Tbilisi and the West have deteriorated rapidly since May, when Georgian Dream passed a law on "foreign agents" that has been condemned by domestic critics and Western analysts as authoritarian and Russian-inspired.
The law requires organisations receiving more than 20% of their funding from abroad to register as "agents of foreign influence".
(Reporting and writing by Lucy Papachristou; Editing by Angus MacSwan)
