At least 12 Georgian protesters with unpaid fines accrued from blocking the road during demonstrations have had their bank accounts seized. Some of those impacted said they were not informed about the fines, most of which are dated back to around a year ago.
Blocking the road during protests was previously punishable by a fine of ₾5,000 ($1,800). The fines have since increased and been coupled with criminal penalties.
Mariam Paitchadze told OC Media that she got a message on Thursday that her bank account had been seized due to an unpaid fine from February 2025 which she had not been informed of.
‘I didn’t know anything about the fine issued on 20 February 2025 (!) for one year, it didn’t appear in the case files of my trial, they didn’t say anything at the border, there was zero attempt to get information about it. I am laughing and crying, what else is left there for me’, she wrote on Facebook.
She was referring to her trial after being arrested for covering her face during a protest in January 2025, which she later appealed in court.
On top of the ₾5,000 ($1,800) fine, the citizens also have to pay additional ₾350 ($130) penalties for failing to pay the fine on time.
Elene Berikashvili, another active protester, told OC Media that she got a message about her bank account being seized that same day. She said she was aware of the two fines which she had appealed with the Interior Ministry — under Georgian law, the enforcement of the fines is halted while they are under appeal.
‘Those two fines were [being] appealed for the whole year. I don’t know what happened next, if the Interior Ministry sent those cases to court or just directly seized my accounts like that’, she told OC Media.
Berikashvili was arrested in November 2025 during a protest march and sentenced to four days in prison under new, stricter regulations on blocking the road.
‘I think that this is another method of repression to scare us [so] that we are not able to help each other’, she said.
Saba Japaridze, another demonstrator, also had his accounts seized on Thursday. He told OC Media he has five fines in total, all from February and March 2025. He says all of those fines had been appealed in court but that the trials had never taken place.
Both he and Berikashvili say their lawyers were confused because accounts shouldn’t have been seized without court rulings. He plans to appeal to court again and request halting seizure of his accounts.
‘This is legal nonsense and I will fight it till the end’, he told OC Media.
Japaridze was also arrested in October 2025 for ‘illegally covering his face’ under the new restricted regulations on freedom of assembly and was sentenced to six days in detention.
Most of the people who had their accounts frozen on Thursday have been active at the protests.
Upon learning about the account seizures, others began calling the police to inquire about what unpaid fines they may unknowingly have received for blocking the road in 2025. Mindia Gabadze, a journalist for Publika, was among them.
‘I called the hot line to discover that I was fined ₾5,000 ($1,850) on 29 July [2025] when I was fulfilling my journalistic duties’, he wrote on social media, adding that he plans to appeal the fine.
OC Media reached out to the Interior MInistry for comment, but has not received a response as of publication.
Georgian Dream introduced fines for artificially blocking the road and covering face during protests in February 2025. Throughout the past year, hundreds of people have been fined for these violations. Some protesters have had over 80 fines issued on different occasions. OC Media’s Director Mariam Nikuradze was fined four times for artificially blocking the road. She was among over 20 journalists who were fined although they were covering the protests in their official capacity.
In October 2025, new restrictions came into effect by which blocking the road became punishable by 15 days in administrative detention and up to 1 year in jail for repeated offences. Protester Zurab Menteshashvili became the first person charged under these criminal charges and has been held in detention since October 2025.
In December, Georgian Dream introduced further restrictions and criminalised blocking pavement with similar punishment measures. Dozens have been charged with this offence, some of whom have been served administrative detentions.
Davit Zedelashvili
