President Saakashvili today signed legislation on organized crime and racketeering, saying:

"I would like to sign legislation on organized crime and racketeering. This law serves to institutionalize our effort to crack down on organized crime and the existence of 'legal thieves'. In the entire Soviet space, during communism, all 'legal thieves' were from Georgia. In the last several years, before the Rose Revolution, thieves dominated Georgian society as well. All the government agencies, the heads of the police force and the Prosecutor's Office, made a deal with thieves.

Some criminal authorities, whose names are known to the whole country, were virtually giving orders on political, economic and other issues in Georgia.

We are adopting a very strict law which enables us to identify who these people are, to confiscate their property and hand it over to the state. This law also enables us to disband organized criminal gangs in order to prevent murders and the interruption of business.

Our aim is to destroy their financial foundation.

We must establish order in Georgian prisons.

Thieves were ruling prisons until now. These privileged prisoners live contentedly in prisons as though they are in hotels. They have separate rooms in prison hospitals from which they order different meals and give interviews over mobile phones.

Recently, thieves went to a famous prisoner and asked him to conduct PR to help them fight against the government.

In response to this we have opened new prisons in Rustavi and Kutaisi.

Today, I am signing a decree calling for a new jail and a prison for 3,000 inmates to be built in Tbilisi in a year.

I instruct Minister of Justice Gia Kavtaradze and Kote Kemularia [Secretary of the National Security Council] to coordinate this.

All criminal authorities will be isolated.

We will ensure that they cannot have contact with the outside world.

We must put an end to drug dealing in prisons, therefore we will have to take strict measures and introduce European standards.

We will put an end to the thieves' rampant activities in our prisons.

Today our prisons are the centers from which criminals and organized crimes exert control.

If order is established in prisons the number of robbery and theft cases will decrease significantly.

I would like to thank the Georgian Parliament and its majority for their courage to adopt this law despite great lobbying.

I believe, this law will have an appeal in the post-Soviet space and as soon as it is put into force we will see its actual, great results. I instruct the Interior Minister and the Prosecutor General to take care of it.

Hence, today we are signing the Georgian legislation on organized crime and racketeering and the President's decree on starting to build a new, European-standard prison in Tbilisi."

Communications Office
of the President of Georgia