News
DRI holds meeting on investigative activities of the State Security Service
07.12.2021
On December 7, the Democracy Research Institute (DRI) held a working meeting on "Investigative Functions of the State Security Service and Distribution of Criminal Cases among Investigative Bodies."
 
The purpose of the meeting was to facilitate the start of a discussion on the need for the State Security Service to relinquish its powers to investigate certain crimes, which in turn would reduce the politicization of investigative structures. The meeting was attended by representatives of state agencies, political parties and non-governmental organizations.
 
To date, structural changes in the security sector have failed to depoliticize investigative agencies. Among the most important challenges are the lack of independence, tendencies towards total control, duplicated competencies of structures, irrational spending of resources, insufficient parliamentary oversight, lack of transparency, low level of accountability, etc.

The files allegedly leaked from the State Security Service, spread via the Internet on September 12, 2021, raised reasonable suspicions that the State Security Service, instead of identifying and eliminating actions that threaten the security of the state, secretly controls the movement, conversations and private lives of citizens.
 
The Democracy Research Institute believes that along with a number of other structural and legislative issues that contribute to the politicization of the security sector and its use for personal/partisan interests, security challenges are conditioned by broad investigative, analytical and intelligence competences of the Security Service, as well as the flawed distribution of competences among the investigative bodies, which requires regulation at the legislative level.
 
The document: "Investigative functions of the State Security Service" is available in Georgian language