Statement of the Georgian Bar Association on Lawyer Inga Arahkamia’s case.

The Georgian Bar Association is carefully monitoring the development of criminal proceedings against the lawyer Inga Arakhamia who has been accused under article 157 - 4  of the Georgian Criminal Code by the Prosecutor’s Office of Tbilisi. The article covers the misuse of information on private life that has been disclosed while practicing the profession. While searching Inga Arakhamia’s workplace, the information containing various personal data concerning the clients, communication between the lawyer and the clientsa nd other types of confidential information were seized.

The use of confidential information and client-lawyer communication as an evidence and annexing those evidence to the criminal case contradicts the fundamental principles of lawyers’ work such as – the protection of professional secrecy.Moreover, article 1437 of Georgian Code of Criminal Proceedings strictly requires that the personal communication of a lawyer must be detached from the professional communication and its content must be destroyed immediately.

We call the General Prosecutor’s Office, not to allow the utilization of client-lawyer communication as an evidence in criminal proceedings and to prevent violation of the principle of professional secrecy. In case of obtaining such information, we call the prosecutor’s office to ensure the destruction of communication content.