Page 37 - bne IntelliNews Georgia country report November 2017

businessman going by the name of Yildiz, said that he lost his suppliers and customers after the government introduced stricter controls and that, in 2014, he was subjected to intimidation by the finance ministry, who called him in but did not give him a reason why he was being investigated.
A letter leaked to Studio Monitor dated March 2015 appears to indicate that the Georgian agriculture ministry bent the law in order to allow Victoria LLC to keep sheep for a shorter period of time in quarantine than the legally-mandated six-month period after importing them from Armenia and before selling them to customers in Iran, Turkey and Arab countries. In the letter, Victoria LLC asked the ministry to shorten the quarantine period to one month in order for it to meet the growing demand from its customers. The National Food Agency granted the company its request, saying that it was "in the best interests of the country", though the law was never changed.
The country's new agriculture minister, Levan Davitashvili, vowed in June to tighten import and quarantine rules so that no sheep from other countries could be sold as Georgian-born, the report concluded.
9.1.4 TMT sector news
Swedish Telecom carrier Telia intends to sell its businesses in Uzbekistan and other Central Asian countries by the end of 2017, Reuters reported on October 20, citing Telia CEO Johan Dennelind.
Telia announced in September 2015 its intention to withdraw from its Central Asian operations after it became entangled in an Uzbek bribery scandal. Telia, along with Russian VimpelCom (now VEON) and MTS, have been pursued by prosecutors for bribing entities connected to Gulnara Karimova , the now disgraced eldest daughter of late Uzbek President Islam Karimov , to win licences to operate 3G and 4G services on the Uzbek mobile market.
The company agreed to pay US and Dutch authorities a global foreign bribery penalty amounting to $965mn to resolve charges related to hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes. Telia gave over $331mn in bribes to an Uzbek official between 2007 and 2010, according to US prosecutors.
Telia is the co-owner of Fintur Holdings, which has business units in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Georgia and Moldova, while its business in Uzbekistan is a separate unit.
“For Fintur Holdings we see continuous progress and high activity and it is still our ambition to divest these assets before year-end, even if I will not set that as a firm deadline,” Telia CEO Johan Dennelind said on October 19.
9.1.5 Health Care sector news
The Georgian medical system is on a steady path to development and London-listed Georgia Healthcare Group (GHG) is serving as its foremost representative, VTB Capital wrote in an analysis published on October 12.
Boasting market shares ranging from 20% to 35% across the hospital, pharmaceutical and medical insurance businesses, GHG is expected to see a
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