On 10 December 2014, member of the United National Movement, Irma Nadirashvili, organised a media briefing where she talked about the business trip expenses of the Minister of Economy and Sustainable Development of Georgia: "Giorgi Kvirikashvili’s plane tickets to New York and Washington cost a total of GEL 18,764. In addition, when travelling to a World Climate Summit, the Minister paid GEL 12,732 for his ticket. There is another curious case when Mr Kvirikashvili paid GEL 8,766 for a ticket to Astana, Kazakhstan. We conducted a study and found out that the ticket to Astana costs GEL 800. We failed to find a ticket as expensive as the Minister bought and it’s incomprehensible where he finds such tickets. These are not ordinary business class tickets. These are prime first-class tickets," said Ms Nadirashvili.

The Minister of Economy and Sustainable Development of Georgia, Giorgi Kvirikashvili, answered Ms Nadirashvili’s statement: "I have never travelled with first-class tickets. I have very often returned from Europe on a night flight on the same day so as not to miss a day of work. Maybe the media will take interest in what the members of Ms Nadirashvili’s favourite government paid for their plane tickets."

FactCheck took interest in these statements and verified their accuracy.

We addressed the Ministry of Economy and Sustainable Development of Georgia with an official letter and requested information about the business trip expenses for Mr Kvirikashvili (2012-2014) and the previous Minister, Vera Kobalia (2011-2012). Based upon the information received from the Ministry, the tables below reflect the business trip expenses for the current (Giorgi Kvirikashvili) and previous (Vera Kobalia) Ministers of Economy and Sustainable Development of Georgia.

Table 1:Business Trip Expenses of Giorgi Kvirikashvili (2012-2014)

Table 2:Business Trip Expenses of Vera Kobalia (2011-2012)

As the tables above make clear, the one-year (2011) business trip expenses for the ex-Minister, Vera Kobalia (271,557), are GEL 88,499 more than the overall (two years and three months) business trip expenses of the current Minister, Giorgi Kvirikashvili (183,058). In addition, Vera Kobalia performed 64 visits in 2011-2012 with expenses reaching GEL 442,155. The current Minister of Economy and Sustainable Development of Georgia performed 55 visits from 2012 to 2014 with expenses equalling GEL 183,058. Vera Kobalia performed 24 visits in 2012 at an overall expense amounting to GEL 170,597. Giorgi Kvirikashvili had 25 visits in 2013 with a total expenditure of GEL 52,199.

As for the class of the tickets used during business trips, Mr Kvirikashvili has not used first-class tickets. The Minister has used mainly economy class tickets for his visits although business class has also been used on several occasions. Vera Kobalia used only economy and business class tickets.

In her statement, Ms Nadirashvili focused upon three business trips taken by the Minister of Economy and Sustainable Development and talked about the expenses incurred during these travels. According to the information about Mr Kvirikashvili’s business trips received from the Ministry of Economy and Sustainable Development of Georgia, the overall cost of the tickets for the Minister’s visit to Washington and New York equalled GEL 18,764. However, this includes plane tickets for three different flight legs: Tbilisi-Munich-Washington (GEL 7,310), Washington-New York (GEL 826) and New York-Munich (GEL 10,627). The first two flight legs are economy class tickets whilst the third one is a business class ticket.

The overall cost of the Minister’s travels to New York did, indeed, amount to GEL 12,732. In this case also, this was the cost of Tbilisi-Munich-New York-Munich-Istanbul-Tbilisi business class tickets. As for the cost of the tickets to Astana (GEL 8,766), according to the information of the Ministry, the Minister arrived in Astana from Brussels, Belgium and this was the sum of the costs of the Brussels-Istanbul-Astana (GEL 7,192) business class tickets and the Astana-Istanbul-Tbilisi (GEL 1,573) economy class tickets.

It should be noted that the previous Minister of Economy also performed visits to New York and Astana. Vera Kobalia visited Astana to participate in an economic forum on 20 April 2011. The cost of the plane tickets amounted to GEL 5,768 which is the sum of the following flight legs: Tbilisi-Istanbul-Almaty (GEL 2,251), Almaty-Astana (GEL 486) and Almaty-Istanbul-Tbilisi (GEL 2,941). On 16 September 2011, the Minister of Economy and Sustainable Development of Georgia visited New York in terms of the official visit of the President of Georgia. The overall cost of the plane tickets amounted to GEL 26,724.

Conclusion

Based upon the analysis of the information received from the Ministry of Economy and Sustainable Development of Georgia, FactCheck found out that Giorgi Kvirikashvili used economy and business class tickets during his business trips abroad. He has never used first-class tickets for business trips. The numbers stated by Ms Nadirashvili are accurate; however, the MP does not specify that these numbers represent the sum of the tickets comprising several flight legs. This alters the context of the statement.

In his response Giorgi Kvirikashvili called upon the media to look into the business trip expenses of the previous government. We analysed the business trip expenses of his predecessor. Our study revealed that Vera Kobalia’s business trip expenses are indeed more than those of Mr Kvirikashvili. Even though Vera Kobalia performed 16% more visits in 2011 and 2012 than Giorgi Kvirikashvili from 2012 to 2014, the difference in the expenses of the two Ministers is 142%.

FactCheck concludes that Giorgi Kvirikashvili’s statement is TRUE whilst Irma Nadirashvili’s statement is FALSE.