Page 50 - BNE_magazine_04_2019

50 I Eurasia bne April 2019
Goodbye, blue sky?
Iulian Ernst in Bucharest and Will Conroy in Prague
Something is not ringing true about Georgia’s placing in the World Bank’s latest Doing Busi- ness Survey. Last November, it was announced that the country had climbed three places to rank sixth out of 190 economies in the ranking, with excellent positions in sub-categories including Protecting minority investors and Enforc- ing contracts. But in the early months of 2019, more and more businesses in the small Caucasus nation have been talking about the gathering of dark clouds.
Two negative developments stand out. Firstly, there are deep-seated suspicions about who stands to benefit from Geor- gia’s London-listed TBC Bank coming under investigation for “activities [that] clearly showed the characteristics of legalization of illegal income, i.e. money
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laundering, and other illicit acts”. The bank’s affiliate TBC Holding is leading
a consortium in developing Georgia’s flagship infrastructure project, Anaklia deep sea port on the Black Sea, designed to be a focal point of trade between
Worrying list that is “tip of iceberg”
The second dark cloud now obscuring Georgia’s ‘blue sky’ business environ- ment is a list issued of companies said to have been damaged or bankrupted by targeted actions conducted by Geor-
“There are deep-seated suspicions about who stands to benefit from Georgia’s London-listed
TBC Bank coming under investigation for money laundering”
Europe, Central Asia and China. If TBC is damaged by official investigations,
it doesn’t take too much to imagine how other investors might try to move in
on the project.
gian state entities. Published by Fady Asly, chairman of the country’s Inter- national Chamber of Commerce (ICC), as reported by InterPressNews (IPN), it is said by the ICC to represent the “tip of