We received a warning rather than a fine. Is there anything to do?

A warning under part 1 carries no monetary amount, but it is a recorded sanction. Its practical effect is that a later identical act becomes repeated conduct and attracts a fine of 150 GEL. It is worth checking now that the facts and the equipment identified in it are stated correctly.

How is the fine under part 3 calculated?

It is 0.1 GEL for every leaked gram, so the total follows directly from the mass. At the threshold of the part — 1,000 grams — that is 100 GEL, and each further gram adds another 0.1 GEL. The article puts no ceiling on this component, so the figure keeps rising with the mass.

Who is fined — the service contractor or the operator of the equipment?

Article 82⁴ does not name a category of person; it describes the conduct. In practice the protocol follows whoever bore the requirement of the regulation for that equipment, which is established from the service contract, the works acts and the maintenance records rather than from the article itself.

Can the recorded leak mass be challenged?

Yes, and under part 3 it is usually the most productive line, because the fine is entirely a function of grams. The questions that matter are how the mass was determined, what documents it rests on, and whether the same underlying data supports a lower figure.

Breach of the environmental rules for servicing refrigeration and air-conditioning equipment (Art. 82⁴)

What Article 82⁴ covers

Article 82⁴ of the Administrative Offences Code of Georgia deals with breaching or failing to comply with the technical regulation on the environmental requirements for servicing heat pumps, air conditioning equipment and refrigeration equipment. The article separates two quite different situations. The first is a loss of hermetic integrity in the refrigeration system of stationary equipment that has caused refrigerant to leak. The second is a breach of any other requirement of the same regulation, unrelated to hermetic integrity. These two routes lead to sharply different amounts, which is why the characterisation written into the protocol matters to you as much as the underlying fact does. A case that reads as a small leak and a case that reads as a documentation failure can differ by an order of magnitude in what you owe. The stationary systems this provision reaches sit in supermarkets, cold stores, hotels and production facilities, and are usually maintained by an outside contractor, so more than one party may have an interest in how the protocol is worded.

The sanctions the article sets

Five parts of the article produce five different outcomes:

loss of hermetic integrity in the refrigeration system of stationary equipment that caused a leak of up to 1 kg of refrigerant — a warning;
the same act committed repeatedly — a fine of 150 GEL;
loss of hermetic integrity that caused a leak of 1 kg or more of refrigerant — a fine of 0.1 GEL for each leaked gram of refrigerant;
breach or non-fulfilment of the other requirements of the regulation — a fine of 1,000 GEL;
that last act committed repeatedly — a fine of 2,000 GEL.

The article provides no other amount, and it does not single out any particular category of responsible person — servicing company, operator or owner — in its own text.

One kilogram is the line that decides the sum

A leak of up to 1 kg ends in a warning under part 1. Exactly one kilogram already falls under part 3, which speaks of a leak of "1 kg or more", and there the fine is calculated by mass: 1,000 grams at 0.1 GEL per gram comes to 100 GEL, and each further gram adds another 0.1 GEL. Part 3 sets no upper limit, so on a large-charge system the amount rises in proportion to the mass that escaped. That is why the whole dispute in these cases usually reduces to a single number — the mass of refrigerant lost. How that number was established is a proper subject of argument: whether it came from measurement, from the difference between recorded charges, or from an estimate, and whether the calculation can be reproduced by someone reading the file afterwards.

A warning is not a neutral outcome

The warning under part 1 creates no payment obligation and is often read as the end of the matter. It is not. It is a recorded sanction, and it is precisely what makes the next identical act a repeated one, which carries a fine of 150 GEL. The same structure runs between parts 4 and 5: a first breach of another requirement of the regulation is 1,000 GEL, and repeating it is 2,000 GEL. So the first document in the sequence deserves the same attention as a monetary penalty, because its existence is what sets the price of everything that follows. If the facts or the equipment are described inaccurately in it, that is far easier to correct while no payment obligation has yet arisen.

Characterisation: hermetic integrity or another requirement

Part 4 is a residual provision: it applies to breaches other than the requirements established by parts 1 and 3. The result looks counterintuitive at first sight — a small leak ends in a warning, while a breach of some other requirement of the regulation costs 1,000 GEL straight away. That is what makes the decisive practical question so simple to state: is the conduct described in the protocol a loss of hermetic integrity, or a failure to comply with a different requirement, and does the protocol identify which requirement it means? Where a lawyer changes the outcome here is in testing that boundary — reconciling the wording of the protocol with the measurement data and the equipment documentation while the amount is still open, rather than after it has been fixed.

What to bring

Before a consultation, gather the documents that reconstruct the condition of the equipment and its service history:

the administrative offence protocol and everything attached to it;
the technical passport of the equipment, with the refrigerant type and charge volume;
servicing, leak-check and recharge records, with dates;
purchase and write-off documents for refrigerant, if the mass was derived from them;
the contract with the servicing organisation and the acts of work performed;
information about any earlier warnings or fines under this article.