Public agencies have granted mining licenses in Adjara to a company owned and headed by Nargiza Chavchanidze, the spouse of Mikheil Tigishvili, the Envoy Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Georgia to the Arab Republic of Egypt. Mikheil Tigishvili and his spouse are also involved in the activities of 20 companies [1], hold stakes and manage their activities, but he hasn’t disclosed the participation of any of them in entrepreneurial activity in his asset declaration filled out in 2024 [2]. 

The envoy’s family is also associated with an obligation to create a free industrial zone in Sagarejo – for this purpose, the state transferred a land parcel with an area of more than 111 hectares to a company in which a 20% stake is held by Mikheil Tigishvili’s son, Durmishkhan Tigishvili. 

The business and mining licenses of the envoy’s family  

Mikheil Tigishvili’s spouse, Nargiza Chavchanidze, registered the DNK ProMining [3] company on July 29, 2022. Twelve days later, on August 10, 2021, LEPL National Agency of Mineral Resources granted a 3-year license to this company, on the basis of which the licensee had the right to extract 111,440 cubic meters of sand and gravel on the Adjaristskali River in the area adjacent to the village of Kveda Makhuntseti, Keda Municipality. 

As a result [4] of the extraction of the inert material, the pillars of a nearby bridge on the Adjaristskali River were deprived of their foundation [5], also endangering high-voltage power transmission posts, which is visible [6] even to the naked eye. 

Despite this, the Government of Georgia, by Decree [7] No. 803 of June 4, 2024, increased [8] the initial permitted volume of the sand and gravel to be extracted by DNK ProMining LLC by 48% to 165,000 cubic meters, with the company required to pay GEL 236,739 to the budget.   

The City Hall of the Municipality of Keda had spent [9] GEL 958,325 in 2019 to construct the aforementioned damaged bridge, which is part of the only road connecting the population living in the Dumbadze neighborhood with the main highway.  

It is noteworthy that Mikheil Tigishvili worked [10] as the Head of the Division of European Countries of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Georgia when his spouse’s company obtained the license, while he has been the Envoy Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Georgia to the Arab Republic of Egypt since [11] 2022 [2]. 

Links to the company building the free industrial zone of Sagarejo 

The Asi Group Georgia [12] company that was selected by the government to build a free industrial zone in the village of Mzisguli (former Bogdanovka) in the Sagarejo Municipality is linked to the Tagishvili family, with the envoy’s son, Durmishkhan Tigishvili, holding a 20% stake in the company.     

By a 2022 ordinance [13] of the government, this company was tasked with building a customs checkpoint and other relevant infrastructure on a land parcel with an area of 1,117,450 sq. meters. In 2023, the government extended [14] the deadline for building the zone by one year; according to the new ordinance [15] of the government, the company was required to build the relevant infrastructure by September 1, 2024, although the data of the Public Registry show that the obligation has not yet been fulfilled. 

Asi Group Georgia [12], in its turn, is linked with Asi Group Hotels Georgia, a company registered in the Netherlands, whose director is Durmishkhan Tigishvili and the full owner is a citizen of Egypt, Khaled Mohamed Abdel-Mon’em Kandil [16]. According to the CEC data, Kandil is registered at the address of the Tigishvili family:   

In 2022, Asi Group Hotels Georgia purchased [17] the Medea Sanatorium in Tskaltubo at an auction without competition [18] (with one bid) for almost GEL 6 million. 

License for individuals with links to Alt-Info 

One more company that was granted a 14-year license by LEPL Agency of Mineral Resources is Forward Mining [19]. The founder of this company and holder of a 42.5% stake, Ilia Tsanava [19], is a business partner of Durmishkhan Tigishvili – the son of the Envoy Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Georgia to Egypt, Mikheil Tigishvili – in ID Global [20] LLC. Forward Mining LLC received the right to extract 114,595 cubic meters of basalt in the territory adjacent to the village of Kvirike, Kobuleti Municipality. At the same time, Ilia Tsanava has been a business partner of Konstantine Morgoshia (the leader of the pro-Russian, ultra-right group, Alt-Info, known for their calls to violence, who has been sanctioned by the U.S.) and his aunt, Tsiala Morgoshia [21], in  Grande Group Georgia LLC (Identification number 405078277) [22] and Grande Group Georgia LLC (Identification number 405062649) [23] since 2014.