Family Business in the Lentekhi City Hall

Author: Nino Bakradze

71-year-old Clara Oniani won 15 tenders announced by Lentekhi municipality over the last three years. Interestingly, Oniani is the mother of Maizer Liparteliani, the head of the Construction Regulation Department of the Lentekhi City Hall.

Oniani registered as an individual entrepreneur in April 2015 and founded "Archi 4" LLC in December 2016. As per the contracts signed with the municipality, Oniani's company was responsible for implementing construction works and preparing project documents and cost estimates. 

Over the period from 2015 to the present, Clara Oniani has received 62,417 Georgian Lari (GEL) from the state budget through tenders. Notably, in 9 instances, Lentekhi municipality directly selected Oniani and her company without a competitive bidding process. Only in 6 cases, Oniani participated in the competition. The company's work was evaluated by a commission comprising representatives from the municipality government, with Oniani's son, Maizer Liparteliani, among its members.

The work remains unfinished in a recent tender won by Clara Oniani's company in February. Currently, "Archi 4" LLC is involved in various construction activities in Lentekhi and its surroundings. Workers on-site assert they are unfamiliar with Clara Oniani as the company's director; instead, as they said, Maizer brought them in for work. 

The quality control of the work, overseen by Liparteliani's mother's company, falls under his official responsibility. He served as a commission member responsible for inspecting the work carried out by the tender winner. However, Liparteliani does not perceive the win of his mother's company in tenders as a conflict of interest.

According to "Transparency International Georgia" researcher Lasha Senashvili, when a family member of an employee in the municipality's government wins the tender, especially when the municipality signs a contract with them through direct procurement, there is a high risk of conflict of interest.

The Law on State Procurement (Article 8) considers a conflict of interest when the bidder and public officials participating in or controlling procurement are relatives. According to Article 13.11 of the Law on Conflict of Interests and Corruption in Public Institutions, "an official or his/her family member may not hold a position or perform any kind of work in an enterprise registered in Georgia, the control of entrepreneurial activities of which falls within the powers of this official or his/her office."

The mayor of Lentekhi, Badri Liparteliani, does not consider this case as a conflict of interest:

In addition to the conflict of interests, the second issue is how well Clara Oniani's company fulfills the duty assigned to it by the last and highest paying (31,307 GEL) tender.

Maizer Liparteliani told us they had not paved this road yet and would have everything ready in a few days. The company was supposed to complete the work on March 18, 2018. However, the on-site workers informed us on April 3 that they would finish the job in two days and have left only the concrete pouring for the fence. Later, the Lentekhi municipality extended the time for the works stipulated in the contract to April 30. After April 30, we plan to reevaluate the quality of the works, as requested by Maizer Liparteliani.