In 2007, an American businessman and friend of the then Prime Minister of Israel, Ehud Olmert, was visiting Damascus before continuing his journey to Jerusalem. On the morning of his departure to Israel, the Mukhabarat, Syria’s secret service, knocked at his hotel room. The Syrian agents calmed down the scared businessman – he was not to be taken to some torture prison, of which there were many in Syria.

We are excited to announce that this week ISET will be hosting a second delegation representing the Norwegian School of Economics in Bergen. A four-day program is planned to start on April 3, which includes anti-corruption seminars, public discussions, and site visits to relevant public institutions and businesses.

Giga Bokeria, the leader of the European Georgia opposition party, visited ISET to deliver a lecture on anti-corruption reforms in Georgia carried out by the United National Movement government of 2003-2012. Bokeria, a UNM member until 2017, played an integral role in the Rose Revolution, which ousted the late Eduard Shevardnadze, under whose tenure Georgia had become wracked by institutional corruption.

Economic reforms announced in the run-up to the parliamentary elections in October 2016 raised concerns about whether Georgia was departing from its path of prudent fiscal policy. A reform of the corporate profit tax and increased infrastructure investment were driving expectations of a 6% of GDP budget deficit in 2017, endangering Georgia’s macroeconomic stability and its reputation with investors.

“The fundamental problem for Georgian security is that Russia holds all the major cards and no one is reshuffling the deck in Georgia’s favor”, writes Neil MacFarlane in his 2016 article on Georgia’s security situation. Georgia has a mighty neighbor that is not democratic, does not respect the right of self-determination of nations, and, most importantly, actually brings its military power to bear whenever Russian (legitimate or illegitimate) interests are not sufficiently honored.