Davit Okitashvili, president of Georgia’s Chamber of Culture, has called on the Prosecutor General’s Office and the State Audit Office to investigate spending on Patriarch Ilia II’s funeral, accusing former Culture Minister Tinatin (Tika) Rukhadze of damaging his reputation and raising questions about the use of public funds.
Patriarch Ilia II, head of the Georgian Orthodox Church, died aged 93 on 17 March. He was buried at Tbilisi’s Sioni Cathedral on 22 March. The Culture Ministry, then headed by Rukhadze, was involved in organising the funeral.
The Finance Ministry allocated ₾5.6 million ($2.1 million) for organising the funeral. Of that amount, ₾3 million ($1.2 million) was allocated to the Culture Ministry.
Questions about the money allocated for Patriarch Ilia II’s funeral have been raised in the media since September.
On 14 September, Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze said that, according to preliminary figures, ₾3 million ($1.1 million) had been allocated for the funeral, of which only ₾722,000 ($270,000) had been spent.
‘If someone had wanted to steal money, they could have easily used up the entire ₾3 million’, Kobakhidze said. He said that the figures were preliminary and that he would examine the matter further before presenting more detailed information to the public.
Okitashvili, a supporter of the ruling Georgian Dream party, published a critical post on Facebook targeting Rukhadze, who was culture minister at the time of the funeral. He called for full disclosure of the expenses and asked the relevant authorities to examine her possible involvement in financial decisions related to the event.
In his post, Okitashvili also accused Rukhadze of attempting to isolate him from representatives of Georgia’s cultural sector and restricting the activities of the Chamber of Culture. He alleged that Mamuka Mdinaradze, a former Georgian Dream leader who has since left politics, had acted as Rukhadze’s ‘patron’.
OC Media contacted Rukhadze for comment on Okitashvili’s allegations.
‘I publicly call on Georgia’s Prosecutor General’s Office and the State Audit Office to examine and make full information about the expenses related to the Patriarch’s funeral available to the public’, Okitashvili wrote, attaching what appears to be an AI-generated image depicting Tinatin Rukhadze holding a cup of coffee and Mamuka Mdinaradze wearing numerous medals.
‘What sums were spent? Who received public funds? How were the procurements carried out, and was every penny spent for its intended purpose? Ms Tika, where did the millions go?’, he asked.
Okitashvili claimed that during Rukhadze’s tenure, the Chamber of Culture and he personally faced repeated obstacles intended to restrict the organisation’s activities and damage his reputation.
He also alleged that Rukhadze had sought to prevent cultural figures from communicating with him, stop a project to unveil stars honouring prominent cultural figures, and evict the Chamber of Culture from its office at the Tbilisi Philharmonic Hall.
Okitashvili further alleged that Rukhadze had referred to him as ‘Bidzina [Ivanishvili]’s agent and [Tea] Tsulukiani’s tail’, and claimed she had repeated the phrase in conversations with other people.
Okitashvili did not provide documentary evidence for these allegations.
OC Media contacted Georgia’s Prosecutor General’s Office and the State Audit Office to ask whether they intended to launch an investigation into Okitashvili’s allegations.
Georgian Dream MP Tengiz Sharmanashvili said the Prosecutor General’s Office was obliged to examine Okitashvili’s allegations and question him about the evidence supporting them.
‘If those arguments are substantial and there are questions to be answered, the Prosecutor General’s Office will also question Ms Rukhadze about all this. It will question Mdinaradze, Sharmanashvili, Petriashvili, and everyone else, if there are grounds to do so. That is how it should act. So, let us wait for the legal procedure’, Sharmanashvili told the media.
On 16 September, Andria Jaghmaidze, head of the Georgian Orthodox Church’s public relations service, said the Church had known from the outset that most of the allocated funds had not been spent.
‘Particularly during that period, we were in frequent communication with Ms Tika Rukhadze, and we knew from her that organisations and private individuals had mostly declined fees or salaries for various services’, Jaghmaidze stated.
He added that Kobakhidze had publicly confirmed this and expressed hope that the late Patriarch’s name would no longer be used in what he described as unfounded accusations and defamation.