Identifier
Created
Classification
Origin
08TBILISI109
2008-01-23 13:33:00
UNCLASSIFIED
Embassy Tbilisi
Cable title:  

GEORGIA'S LEGAL EAGLES PROSECUTE ELECTION CRIMES

Tags:  SNAR PGOV PHUM KCRM KJUS GG 
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R 231333Z JAN 08
FM AMEMBASSY TBILISI
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 8656
INFO RUEAWJA/DOJ WASHDC
RUCNCIS/CIS COLLECTIVE
UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 TBILISI 000109 

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

STATE FOR INL/AAE, EUR/ACE, EUR/CAC
DOJ FOR OPDAT (LEHMANN/NEWCOMBE)

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: SNAR PGOV PHUM KCRM KJUS GG
SUBJECT: GEORGIA'S LEGAL EAGLES PROSECUTE ELECTION CRIMES


UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 TBILISI 000109

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

STATE FOR INL/AAE, EUR/ACE, EUR/CAC
DOJ FOR OPDAT (LEHMANN/NEWCOMBE)

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: SNAR PGOV PHUM KCRM KJUS GG
SUBJECT: GEORGIA'S LEGAL EAGLES PROSECUTE ELECTION CRIMES



1. Summary: For the first time in its history, Georgia's Office of
Public Prosecution Service (OPP) charged individuals with committing
election crimes. U.S.-trained OPP prosecutors charged that two
individuals, during the January 5, 2008, election, cast fraudulent
ballots. To prepare the OPP for the elections, Department of
Justice/Office of Overseas Prosecutorial Development, Assistance and
Training (DOJ/OPDAT) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
election crimes experts trained 50 OPP prosecutors and investigators
on effective methods for investigating and prosecuting election
crimes. For two days, they identified typical election crimes,
discussed investigative techniques, and explored the importance of
collecting evidence early in the prosecution. Armed with this
information, OPP prosecutors and investigators responded to
election-day complaints and have, for the first time in Georgia's
history, charged two individuals with election crimes. Although
these cases must proceed through the court system, simply charging
these individuals is a significant step in the direction of truly
free and fair elections. The challenge for the upcoming
parliamentary elections will be to help address more sophisticated
election irregularities, such as campaign finance, and to develop
productive working relationships with the Georgian Young Lawyers
Association (GYLA) and other domestic organizations that monitor the
elections and receive citizen complaints.

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Take It, To the Limit . . .
--------------


2. In prior elections, the OPP received complaints about criminal
activity. These complaints included allegations of ballot box
stuffing, fraudulently signing the election rolls, and forcibly
stealing the ballot boxes. The OPP limited its investigations to
counting the number of ballots cast to determine if they
corresponded to the individuals registered to vote. Additionally,
they examined the voting rolls to determine if someone forged the
signatures. Finally, they unsuccessfully tried to identify the
individuals involved in the ballot box heists. Unfortunately, none

of these investigations ever resulted in any charges against the
culprits.

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The New Kid in Town - - Learning How to
Prosecute An Election Crime
--------------


3. The January 5, 2008, election offered a new opportunity for the
OPP. A competitive election offered Georgian voters an opportunity
to freely choose their President, but also afforded criminals an
opportunity to interfere with the voting process, including casting
fraudulent ballots. In view of the latter, the DOJ/OPDAT RLA and
the FBI Legatt seized upon the opportunity presented by the
Presidential election to help the OPP increase its capacity to
prosecute election crimes. Although Georgia criminalizes bribing
voters, casting forged ballots, and using false identification, OPP
prosecutors and investigators had never charged anyone with any of
those election crimes. The investigators claimed that they lacked
the knowledge necessary to investigate such crimes. For example,
they understood that people cast fraudulent ballots and forged
voting rolls, but they were unsure as to the kind of evidence
necessary to collect or the witnesses to interview in order to prove
the case in court. Moreover, the prosecutors naively suggested that
people would not be able to commit election crimes as a result of
the Central Election Committee's (CEC) efforts to purge the voter
rolls of ineligible voters and Georgia's requirement that people
present photograph identification prior to obtaining a ballot. In
short, after meeting with the prosecutors and the investigators, it
became clear that a practical primer on best practices in
investigating and prosecuting election crimes would be extremely
beneficial for Georgian law enforcement. Such a seminar would focus
on explaining likely election crime scenarios, identifying the
evidence that should be collected, and helping the investigators
develop techniques to prosecute these cases.


4. On December 13-14, 2007, Georgian prosecutors, investigators, and
U.S. experts examined how to investigate and prosecute a variety of
election crimes. First, Assistant United States Attorney (AUSA) Hal
Goldsmith described a fraudulent voting scheme from the U.S. in
which an election official forged voter signatures and fraudulently
cast ballots. AUSA Goldsmith explained that an election judge
waited until the end of the day then forged signatures of people who
had not voted and gave fraudulent ballots for others to cast. The
Georgians agreed that a similar situation could happen in Georgia.
As such, the discussions moved to what evidence was necessary to
prosecute a person for such conduct and how to secure the evidence.



5. The U.S. experts explained that before interviewing the victims,
the police removed them from the scene. This was important because
it allowed the victims to explain the facts while they were fresh in

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their memory but eliminated potential interference from the press or
the criminal's associates, and prevented the suspect from learning
that he was under investigation. Moreover, after the police
identified the criminal, they returned to the polling place, removed
him, and interviewed him at the police station. They also secured
other evidence, including the pen the suspect used to forge
signatures, and notified officials that they would collect the
voting rolls and other items after the election. This accomplished
several key goals. By securing the evidence early in the process,
law enforcement officials prevented the suspect or his associates
from destroying material evidence. Criminals committing election
crimes depend on the election's infrequency and speed to destroy the
evidence necessary to prosecute. Consequently, law enforcement
officials must act quickly to preserve the necessary evidence.
Moreover, by removing the suspect from the polling station or
notifying him that he was a suspect, the police prohibited him from
concocting a story or manipulating the evidence to support the
story.


6. FBI Special Agent Michael Elliott and the Georgian prosecutors
and investigators examined how law enforcement officials act rapidly
to secure evidence, remove the suspect from the polling station, and
interview the victims and other witnesses. Special Agent Elliott
and AUSA Goldsmith both mentioned the importance of cooperation
among law enforcement agencies. For example, the creation of an
election-day task force, composed of several law enforcement
agencies, to rapidly respond to election crime complaints has proven
successful in many countries. The Georgian prosecutors and
investigators indicated that their law prohibits them from creating
a task force without a court order until a crime is committed and
law enforcement initiates an investigation. However, they also
indicated that nothing prohibited them from informally initiating
contacts with necessary task force members. For example, they
agreed that the law does not prevent them from alerting local law
enforcement officials in each region to include them in a task force
if a crime were to occur in that region. They also agreed that they
could identify points of contact at the various ministries to
include in a task force to investigate an election crime. In other
words, while the prosecutors and investigators could not formally
create a task force, they could create an investigative body that
could be activated upon the receipt of an election crime complaint.


7. Two additional election crime scenarios were discussed. First,
the Georgians analyzed a situation in which political parties bribed
individuals to vote in their candidate's favor and identified the
evidence needed to successfully prosecute this crime. They
discussed using cooperating undercover witnesses, which are allowed
under Georgian law, in such cases to obtain incriminating statements
from those engaged in criminal activity. Indeed, undercover
witnesses may be able to document a criminal bragging that he
"purchased" a certain number of votes. This is powerful evidence
for the prosecution during a trial. They also considered using
undercover law enforcement officials to document bribery. The AUSA
explained how he used law enforcement officers to pose as
individuals who would cast a fraudulent vote in exchange for money.
The undercover officers used a hidden microphone to record their
conversations with those who offered them money for votes while
other officers videotaped these transactions from a nearby vehicle.



8. Finally, the Georgian prosecutors and investigators also
discussed efforts to fraudulently inflate the voting rolls with
their U.S. counterparts. AUSA Goldsmith described a scenario in
which American volunteers, claiming to register individuals, falsely
filled out voting applications in order to create fictitious
individuals for whom others might cast fraudulent votes. Here, the
evidence necessary for a successful prosecution would be the
registration cards that the volunteers submitted, proof that the
people for whom the registration cards were submitted did not exist,
and, if possible, statements from the volunteers admitting that they
falsely submitted these items.


9. The prosecutors and the investigators found the bribery scenario
plausible. Historically, some political parties have paid
individuals to vote for the party's candidate or purchased a voter's
identification card to be used by another on election-day. The
Georgians, though, did not believe that inflating the voter rolls
would be possible because the CEC had taken steps to prevent this
action. Nevertheless, the Georgians agreed that people might have
lied to the CEC representatives concerning who lived in various
residences. Moreover, since individuals might not be in Georgia on
January 5, 2008, the Georgians agreed that unscrupulous individuals
might try to cast votes for such absentee citizens. Ultimately, the
Georgians conceded that, notwithstanding the CEC's efforts,
individuals could inflate the voter rolls and fraudulently cast
ballots.

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Desperado, Why Don't You Come to Your Senses

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--------------


10. Armed with this information, Georgian prosecutors and
investigators awaited complaints on January 5, 2008. Based on
citizen complaints, two individuals, for the first time in the OPP's
history, will be prosecuted for election crimes - namely, the
casting of fraudulent ballots. Specifically, the OPP has charged
one individual with violating the prohibition against participating
in an election using another person's identification or a false
document. According to the charge, an eyewitness saw the defendant
drop several forged ballots into a ballot box and tried to detain
him. The defendant broke free from the observer, and was
subsequently arrested. The police learned the suspect's identity,
questioned the witnesses and the suspect on January 5, 2008, and
subsequently charged him. The OPP has also charged another
individual with casting more than one ballot in violation of
Georgia's criminal code. Again, the police interviewed the
witnesses and the suspect on January 5, 2008. The witnesses
confirmed that they observed the suspect cast a ballot early in the
morning and cast a second ballot later in the evening. The OPP did
not charge either individual until after the election.


11. These charges are significant for two reasons. First, they
represent the first time in Georgia's history that the prosecution
has charged individuals with election crimes. Charging individuals
with election crimes demonstrates that the government takes these
types of crimes seriously. It will invest its limited funds and
resources to prosecute these crimes. As such, Georgian citizens
should vote with greater confidence knowing that the GOG will make
every effort to ensure that these votes will not be diluted by
individuals casting fraudulent ballots. Second, the swiftness with
which the prosecutors and the investigators responded to the
complaints demonstrates that the two-day seminar was effective. The
U.S. experts highlighted the need to secure the evidence necessary
to prosecute election related crimes quickly given that such
evidence is routinely destroyed right after the election. They also
emphasized the need to quickly identify the culprit and obtain a
statement from him, if any, in order to prevent him from destroying
critical evidence or concocting a story that would have some factual
support. Here, Georgian prosecutors and the investigators
demonstrated that they had learned from the experiences their U.S.
colleagues shared with them. They responded to the complaint on
election-day, spoke with the relevant witnesses and secured
statements from them, and identified the suspects and obtained
statements from them. Moreover, the prosecutors exercised restraint
in that they did not remove the fraudulent ballots from the voting
box because they could not identify them. Additionally, they waited
to charge the defendants until after the election in order to avoid
claims that they attempted to influence the election's outcome.


12. Finally, and most critically, Georgian law enforcement initiated
a working partnership with GYLA and other indigenous NGOs that
received complaints from voters and monitors similar to those that
resulted in these election crime charges. Indeed, the work of
Georgian and international monitors revealed that other types of
election crimes may have been committed in the run up to the
election and on election day. These include illegal campaign
financing, something that the both the U.S. and European democracies
have recently had to confront, polling station intimidation, and,
post-election, fraudulent ballot counting. This also underscores the
importance of the GOG's continued dedication to enhancing the
Georgian prosecutors and investigators' knowledge and skill level so
that they are prepared for the upcoming parliamentary elections.

--------------
The Long Run - - How Charging Election Crimes
Improves the Rule of Law
--------------


13. Comment. The January 5, 2008, Presidential election was the
first competitive election in Georgia's history. In order for
Georgians to have faith in current and future elections, they must
believe that the government will enforce the law and prevent people
from diluting the value of legitimate votes through criminality.
The OPP's maiden efforts to prosecute election crimes should
strengthen the public's faith in not only the knowledge and skills
of Georgian law enforcement, but also their determination to ensure
fair elections in Georgia. Honest citizens now have concrete proof
that the OPP will not tolerate efforts to wrongfully influence the
election. Further, in anticipation of the upcoming parliamentary
elections, Georgian law enforcement must further develop its
election crime prosecution sophistication in order to address some
of the more sophisticated election fraud - - e.g., campaign finance
and other illegal funding schemes - - that allegedly occurred during
the January 5th elections. Both DOJ/OPDAT and the FBI stand ready to
assist the Georgians with this task.

TEFFT