The Georgian National Communications Commission (GNCC) has issued written warnings to TV broadcaster Formula and its parent company Formula Multimedia, ordering them to cease receiving funding from a Cyprus-based company owned by the channel’s founder, Davit Kezerashvili.
According to an official statement from the GNCC, in the second quarter of 2025, Formula Multimedia LLC received ₾1.4 million ($490,000) from the Cypriot-registered group Infinity CV Group CY LTD. During this same period, Formula reportedly received ₾460,000 ($170,000).
The GNCC claimed that apart from this financing, Formula Multimedia ‘does not have any other significant income’.
Formula was founded by Kezerashvili and others in 2019, and has since secured a reputation as perhaps the most neutral of Georgia’s main TV channels in its news coverage. After the shuttering of Mtavari earlier this year, it, along with TV Pirveli, is one of just two major TV broadcasters that remains critical of the government.
They said the funding was received after controversial amendments to the broadcasting law were brought in, which bans ‘direct or indirect funding of a broadcaster from a foreign power’.
‘The Communications Commission has warned Formula and Formula Multimedia in writing and ordered them to cease receiving funding from INFINITY CV GROUP CY LTD’, the GNCC’s official statement read.
The GNCC also said they had issued warnings to three radio broadcasters, the Journalists’ Union Voice of the People, Radio–TV Nori, and System Gama for violating the same law, ordering them to ‘stop receiving funding from foreign powers’. In their case, no details were given as to how much money was received, nor where it was allegedly coming from.
According to the legislation adopted in April, a ‘foreign power’ is ‘a subject constituting the system of government of a foreign state; an individual who is not a citizen of Georgia; a legal entity not established on the basis of Georgian legislation; an organisational formation (including a foundation, association, corporation, union, other type of organisation), or any other type of association of persons that is established on the basis of the law of a foreign state and/or international law’.
Georgian Dream has repeatedly claimed that this legislation, along with the controversial foreign agents law, was necessary to fight the ‘influence of external powers’. Nonetheless, critics of the ruling party have emphasised that these changes aim to undermine the media and civil society in an already fragile democracy.
Kezerashvili’s legal woes
The company referenced as funding Formula Multimedia was registered in Cyprus in 2019. The current director is listed as Davit Kezerashvili, a businessperson and media mogul who formerly served as Georgia’s Defence Minister from 2006–2008 under the then-ruling United National Movement (UNM) party.
After Georgian Dream took power in 2012, several criminal cases were launched against Kezerashvili. In 2021, he was found guilty of embezzling €5 million ($5.2 million) in 2008 and was sentenced to 10 years in prison in absentia.
Formula was founded by Kezerashvili and others in 2019, and has since secured a reputation as perhaps the most neutral of Georgia’s main TV channels in its news coverage.
In 2023, Kezerashvili announced he was transferring half of his controlling share of Formula to the company’s ‘collective’, but would continue to finance the channel. He added that he would transfer the other half of his 51% stake in the company ‘after the end of oligarchic rule’ in Georgia, a reference to the founder of the ruling Georgian Dream party, billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili.
His decision came just days after the BBC published an investigation in which they accused Kezerashvili of being behind an international ‘billion-dollar’ scam network.
‘I have decided, alongside my support, to give TV channel Formula the opportunity to create a completely new and uniquely experienced media model, one that will further elevate its editorial independence — including independence from me (which, until now, the channel has never lacked)’, Kezerashvili said about his decision at the time.
However, he denied all allegations and stated that he would do everything ‘to prove in court the injustice of the allegations made in the investigative film’.
In late 2024, after Kezerashvili won a legal dispute with the BBC over the investigation, the BBC retracted the story.
Mikheil Gvadzabia
