Who Article 165 is addressed to
Article 165 of the Georgian Code of Administrative Offences has one specific addressee: banks and other financial and credit institutions. It regulates two closely connected duties — the rules on opening accounts, and the rules on transferring sums to the budget. The logic behind it is straightforward. When an account is opened, the institution verifies that the payer has been registered with the tax authorities, and it reports the opening of that account to those authorities. When a tax payment order arrives instructing a transfer of funds to the budget, the institution must accept that order and execute it as a matter of priority.
A breach of these duties is not really about one client's file; it is about the institution's own procedure. That is why cases of this kind tend to surface not in a single episode but in the way a process is organised — in internal regulations, in the sequence in which operations are executed, or in the automation that sends information to the tax authorities.
It helps to read the article's list as two groups. The first concerns the account-opening stage — the requirement for the document confirming registration, and the requirement to report the opening. The second concerns an account that is already running, and deals with the order to transfer funds to the budget. In practice these two groups are served by different internal processes, so within a single institution a failure usually appears in one of them and not the other.
The conduct the article penalises
Article 165 brings four distinct kinds of conduct together into one offence. Each is independently sufficient to found liability:
- opening a settlement or other account for a payer without the documents confirming registration with the tax authorities having been submitted;
- failing to submit information to the tax authorities about the opening of the account;
- failing to accept tax payment orders (dispositions) for the transfer of sums to the budget;
- failing to execute received tax payment orders (dispositions) as a matter of priority.
The last limb is the one most often disputed, because it concerns not the fact of execution but its order. It is not enough that the order was eventually carried out; what also matters is the sequence in which it was carried out relative to other operations on the account.
The fine the law provides
Conduct falling under Article 165 carries a fine of 100 to 130 GEL. The article sets a single range for all four kinds of conduct listed above. It contains no separate aggravated part — for repeat conduct, for example — and it provides for no penalty of any other kind.
The sum is modest, but that is not a reason to leave the matter unattended. A decision records the fact of an administrative offence, and whatever may follow from a breach beyond this article — supervisory or tax consequences — is not determined by Article 165 itself and has to be assessed separately, on its own footing.
How a case usually unfolds
Cases of this type generally begin with a documentary review. The date the account was opened is compared against the client's registration data, against the record of the information sent to the tax authorities, and against the processing history of the payment order. A protocol of administrative offence is then drawn up, the case is heard, and a decision is issued.
One caveat is worth stating plainly. Article 165 names the tax authorities as the recipient of the information and of the payment orders, but it does not itself specify which body draws up the protocol, which body hears the case, or the period within which the decision may be appealed. Those questions are governed by other provisions of the Code. Check the manner and time limit for appeal against the explanation printed on the document actually served on the institution.
Where the dispute is decided, and what a lawyer does
In this category of case the argument almost always rests on a technical record rather than on a general explanation of intent. The questions that decide the outcome are usually these:
- whether the document confirming registration was in fact missing at the moment the account was opened;
- whether the information about the opening was sent, and whether the transmission record proves it;
- whether the tax payment order was accepted and, if it was not, for what reason — a technical failure and a refusal are not the same thing;
- whether priority of execution was observed, and what evidences the sequence of operations;
- whether the fine stays within the 100 to 130 GEL range, and whether the particular figure is reasoned.
The lawyer's role here is largely one of translation into the language of evidence. Logs, system records and internal procedures are not legal arguments in themselves until they are set against the factual version of events set out in the protocol. Doing that well is usually a matter of getting the right extracts, in the right form, before the hearing rather than after it.
What to bring
Bring the material that lets the chronology be reconstructed:
- the protocol of administrative offence and the decision, with the date of service;
- the account-opening file: the application, the client's documents, the date of opening;
- confirmation that information was transmitted to the tax authority;
- the tax payment order (disposition) and the records of its receipt and processing;
- the account statement for the relevant period and the sequence of operations;
- the internal regulations and any correspondence with the tax authority.