Agency WPS
DEFENSE and SECURITY (Russia)
March 31, 2006 Friday

MOLE CLOSE TO SAAKASHVILI;
Official of the presidential administration in Georgia arrested for
espionage and treason against the state

by Yuri Simonjan

A SPY SCANDAL IN GEORGIA; An update on the spy scandal in Georgia.

Simon Kiladze, official of the PR Service of the Presidential
Administration, was arrested in his office on the premises of the
Georgian State Chancellery yesterday on charges of espionage and
treason against the state. Kiladze’s duties included monitoring of
foreign, mostly Russian, media. Georgian TV channels ran the tape
showing arrest of a mole supplying sensitive information to secret
services of “a foreign state” on Tuesday morning.

Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili announced at a special briefing
yesterday that since 2004, Kiladze had “systematically updated
secret services of a foreign state on the president of Georgia;
senior officials of the legislative and executive branches of the
government, visits of state delegations, consultations and matters
discussed in the course of these visits, and provided information
of strategic importance for the country.” “This man used e-mail
or international mail depending on the value of the data. He even
brought sensitive information to the foreign country in person every
now and then,” Merabishvili said. By the minister’s rough estimate,
Kiladze was paid at least $20,000 for the information (just the money
transacted via Georgian banks). “The Interior Ministry knows for a
fact that Kiladze has leaked information to his spy runners since
2004. Identities of his handlers will be revealed in the course of
the trial,” Merabishvili said.

Director of the Presidential Administration, Georgy Arveladze,
arranged another briefing. He announced that “agents of a foreign
state” had operated in Georgia and even in its upper echelons of
power with impunity until recently but “no more”. Arveladze assured
journalists that it will be different now. “Nobody will be permitted
to trade interests of the state for money from foreign intelligence,”
he said.

Journalists were never told what country the spy had been working
for. Neither was President Mikhail Saakashvili any more specific. He
only told journalists yesterday that “Georgia has a lot of enemies”
who want to split it “but they will be frustrated.” As for the
likes of Kiladze, the people “working against their own country”,
Saakashvili advised them to surrender to counterintelligence before
May 1, in return for guarantees that no steps would be taken.

As a matter of fact, the circle of potential enemies hungry for
sensitive information on Georgia is not broad at all. Popular
Tbilisi weekly Kviris Palitra or Palitra Nedeli featured results
of an interesting opinion poll not so long ago. Its readers were
asked to name two particularly hostile countries. Almost 700 readers
responded and 94.4% of them named Russia. Belarus was named the second
hostile country (33.7%). No wonder – what with all the latest scandals
between Tbilisi and Minsk. Armenia became the third hostile country
with 28.1%. One of these three countries will probably be identified
as having recruited Kiladze.

Source: Nezavisimaya Gazeta, March 29, 2006, p. 4