What this offence actually covers
Decommissioning an economic facility — the final shutdown and dismantling of a plant, workshop, warehouse, quarry, tank farm or any other facility used for economic activity — is not only a technical and accounting exercise. Georgian law expects environmental requirements to be observed at this last stage of a facility's life cycle as well, because closure is exactly the moment when residual material, demolished structures, contaminated soil or liquids are most likely to be left behind unattended. Article 69⁵ of the Administrative Offences Code of Georgia addresses breaches committed at that stage.
In practice this means that closing a facility is a self-contained legal process with its own completion, not merely the moment activity stops. Where something goes wrong in that process, liability can arise even though the plant itself is no longer operating.
What Article 69⁵ says and what it costs
The wording is short. A breach of environmental requirements during the decommissioning of an economic facility carries a fine of two hundred to four hundred GEL. That is the only sanction the article provides: the lower limit is 200 GEL and the upper limit is 400 GEL. The article provides for no confiscation and for no withdrawal of the right to carry out an activity.
A second feature matters just as much. Article 69⁵ is a blanket provision — it does not itself list the "environmental requirements" it protects, because those are set out in other acts of environmental legislation. So before this article can be said to have been breached, the specific requirement written into some other act has to be located. What the protocol must contain is not fixed by Article 69⁵ — that is governed by other provisions of the Code; the practical question for you is which rule you were required to observe during the decommissioning.
Who is held liable
The article reaches whoever was under a duty to carry out the decommissioning, or who in fact carried it out: the owner of the facility, the party holding it in use, the client who commissioned the works, or the contractor who performed them. Where a third party dismantled the site under contract, the decisive question becomes which of them owed the particular environmental requirement in question. This is not a formality. It is the point at which it most often emerges that the protocol names the wrong subject, and that the penalty is being imposed on a party who never held the obligation at all.
How the case proceeds
A case begins with an administrative offence protocol drawn up by a representative of the authorised body following an inspection or an on-site examination. The protocol records the factual circumstances, the time, the place and the provision considered to have been breached. You are entitled to give a written explanation when the protocol is drawn up and to enter your objections into it. Signing does not mean agreement, and refusing to sign does not stop the proceedings.
The case is then heard by the authorised body or the court, which issues a decision either imposing the fine or discontinuing the case. That decision is appealed in the manner and within the period laid down by the Code. Because Article 69⁵ sets the penalty as a range — from 200 to 400 GEL — the specific amount is fixed separately within those limits; the article names no criterion for that choice, which follows from other provisions of the Code and from the circumstances of the case.
What you can do, and where a lawyer changes the outcome
Disputes in this category are rarely about whether the facility was closed. They almost always turn on three questions: whether a specifically identified requirement was in fact breached, whether you were the person obliged to comply with it, and whether the amount imposed matches the character of the breach. A lawyer works along those three lines — testing the protocol for substantive and formal defects, establishing from the contracts and internal records who actually bore the duty, and arguing the individualisation of the fine down from the upper limit towards the lower one.
Remediation is a separate point. If the defect was cured before the protocol was drawn up, or after it, that fact belongs in the case file in documentary form. An oral assurance that the site was cleared adds nothing to the record and cannot be weighed by the body deciding the case.
What to gather before the first consultation
- copies of the administrative offence protocol and of the decision imposing the fine;
- the decision to decommission the facility and the schedule of works;
- dismantling contracts with contractors, together with handover and acceptance acts;
- documents confirming the removal and disposal of waste;
- photographs and video of the condition of the site before and after decommissioning;
- inspection reports and all correspondence with the authority.
The earlier this material is assembled, the more realistic it is to influence the outcome — both on the size of the fine and on the question of liability itself.