What Article 82⁵ actually covers
Article 82⁵ of the Administrative Offences Code of Georgia protects one specific obligation: when plastic and/or biodegradable bags are imported into the territory of Georgia, produced, and/or sold, the requirements of the technical regulation — the "Rules on the regulation of plastic and biodegradable bags" — must be met. The offence can be recorded at any of those three stages, and the article treats them as equivalent: goods arriving at the border, goods coming off a production line, and goods sitting on a shop shelf all fall under the same provision. Liability is placed on the entrepreneurial entity. In practice that means the protocol is drawn up against the business rather than against the individual employee who handed a bag to a customer, and the fine is collected from the business. If you import, manufacture, distribute or retail these products in Georgia, this article is written about your operation, whether or not you produced the bags yourself.
The sanction the article sets
Article 82⁵ produces four possible outcomes, and which one applies is decided by two questions: is this a first breach or a repeated one, and is confiscation of the goods possible?
- First breach, confiscation possible — a fine of 1,000 GEL on the entrepreneurial entity, together with confiscation of the relevant goods;
- First breach, confiscation impossible — a fine of 1,000 GEL plus the number of plastic or biodegradable bags detected (the object of the offence) multiplied by 0.25 GEL;
- Repeated breach, confiscation possible — a fine of 2,000 GEL, together with confiscation of the relevant goods;
- Repeated breach, confiscation impossible — a fine of 2,000 GEL plus the number of bags detected multiplied by 0.25 GEL.
The article provides no other amount, and confiscation is not an alternative to the fine — the law attaches it to the fine rather than offering a choice between them. The quantity-based component appears only in the branch where the goods can no longer be taken.
Why the number of bags is part of the fine
Once confiscation is impossible — most obviously because the stock has already been sold or otherwise dispersed — the fine stops being a flat figure. The base of 1,000 GEL, or 2,000 GEL on repetition, is increased by the detected quantity multiplied by 0.25 GEL. That turns the count written into the protocol into a direct financial term: every unit recorded adds exactly 0.25 GEL to the total, while the base of 1,000 GEL, or 2,000 GEL on repetition, stays where it is. It follows that in this branch the most consequential thing in the file is not the legal characterisation but the arithmetic — how the inspector arrived at the quantity, whether the count was physical or estimated from documents, and whether the calculation is recorded in a checkable form.
How the case unfolds in practice
A case begins with an inspection and an administrative offence protocol. The protocol records where and when the goods were found, which requirement of the technical regulation is said to have been breached, and what quantity is involved. It separately records what happened to the goods — whether they were taken on the spot. That entry decides which of the four branches above governs the amount, so it deserves as much attention as the description of the breach itself. The case is then examined by the authorised body, which issues a decision, and that decision can be appealed in the manner established by legislation. Article 82⁵ itself sets no appeal deadline and no period within which an act counts as repeated, so both questions are answered from the general rules and from the file.
Where legal representation changes the outcome
The elements of this offence are separable, and each of them feeds into the sum. The points genuinely open to argument are:
- whether the specific goods fall within the scope of the technical regulation at all;
- which requirement of the regulation was breached, and whether the protocol reasons that out or merely asserts it;
- whether you are the entrepreneurial entity to whom the particular operation — import, production or sale — is attributed;
- whether the act is genuinely repeated — Article 82⁵ lays down no rule for counting repetition, so that comes from the general provisions of the Code;
- the accuracy of the count, in every case where the 0.25 GEL multiplier is in play.
A lawyer's contribution here is to identify which of these links is weakest on the facts and to support that with documentary evidence, rather than to ask for cancellation in general terms. Nothing about representation guarantees a result; what it does is put the disputable parts of the calculation in front of the decision-maker while the amount is still being fixed.
What to bring
Before a consultation, gather the documents that reconstruct the factual picture as it stood on the day of the inspection:
- the administrative offence protocol and everything attached to it;
- origin documents for the goods — import declaration, invoice, delivery and acceptance act;
- conformity documentation issued by the manufacturer or the supplier;
- stock balances and sales records for the period inspected;
- information about earlier inspections and any penalties that have already taken effect.