The FINANCIAL — Tax Inspection has sequestrated all banking accounts to the Tbilisi power distribution company Telasi.
The Company officials have already applied to the law court with protest.
“Tax Inspection is claiming that Telasi has to pay USD 12 million. This claim is in process for many years, which we do not agree,” Valeri Fanculaia, head of PR Telasi, told the FINANCIAL.
They claim the fall-winter reconstruction works will be hindered in the result of the tax inspection decision.
Telasi management applies to the state offices to continue dialogue with them in order to release frozen accounts.
Telasi is an electricity distribution company of Tbilisi, Georgia. In 1998, the company was privatized to AES Corporation, whose efforts to repair and modernize the electrical grid of Tbilisi was documented in the film "Power Trip", by Paul Devlin.
In 2003, AES sold Telasi to a Russian company Inter RAO UES, a joint subsidiary of RAO UES and Rosenergoatom. The Russian company paid $26 million to AES for Telasi and in return AES paid off $60 million of Telasi debt, in effect paying Inter RAO UES $34 million to take Telasi off their hands. The sale took place less than a year after AES-Telasi CFO Niko Lominadze was found murdered in his apartment and numerous other threats were made to AES-Telasi management. In the end, AES lost more than $300 million on the Telasi episode.
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