The employees of Investigation Service [IS] of the Ministry of Finance of Georgia celebrated their professional day and the 20th anniversary of establishment. In addition, report of the activities of the Service for 2023 has been presented. Minister of Finance - Lasha Khutsishvili opened the event dedicated to the Professional Day of the IS. The Minister congratulated employees of IS their professional day, positively assessed the work performed by the Agency during the past year and thanked employees of the Service for their work.

During his speech at the event, the Minister of Finance, Lasha Khutsishvili, spoke about the important role of the IS in the direction of prevention, detection, suppression and investigation of financial and economic crimes, “as a result of the efforts of the IS, the amount of funds mobilized in favor of the state budget has steadily exceeded GEL 100 million in the last 3 years. In the same period, there is an increasing trend of indicators, both in terms of tax evasion, as well as illegal entrepreneurial activities, violation of the rules related to the movement of goods across the customs border of Georgia and in relation to the facts of the crime exposed in terms of issuing, storing, selling or transporting excisable goods subject to marking, without an excise mark. I hope that IS will continue to successfully cope with various challenges within its mandate, including, considering the growing perspective of the intensive development of the transit-transport corridor connecting Asia and Europe, prevention, detection and suppression of complex crimes and corrupt transactions committed in the financial and economic field of the country”.

Head of the IS, Soso Ramishvili, noted that the IS has gone through a difficult and at the same time important path of development and today it appears as an Agency with a high standard. Every year, the IS expands and makes its activities more effective, which contributes to the improvement of the competitive business environment and investment climate of our country. While presenting the activity report of 2023, the head of the IS underlined importance of active involvement of the IS in fighting against financial and economic crime, together with the counterpart agencies operating in the EU member states. It was also highlighted that in 2023, the Service exposed 2 502 facts of violation of law, 1 603 persons were charged within the framework of the above-mentioned criminal cases, amount accrued to the state budget estimated more than GEL 379 million and the mobilized amount exceeded GEL 130 million: “I would like to express my special gratitude to the representatives of the invited agencies, both the system of the Ministry of Finance, as well as the representatives of the law enforcement agencies presented, for the close and effective coordination of our Services in fighting against crime, as a result of which we were able to detect, prevent and suppress crimes within the framework of joint activities”.

At the end of the event, the Minister of Finance and Head of IS awarded employees of the Service for exemplary performance of their duties and professionalism with the badges and certificates of appreciation.