What Article 139⁵ regulates
Article 139⁵ of the Code of Administrative Offences of Georgia establishes administrative liability for a carrier company's failure to fulfil an obligation established by the Georgian Law on the Legal Status of Foreigners and Stateless Persons. The norm concerns organisations involved in the carriage of persons: a carrier company that transports foreigners or stateless persons is itself responsible for the performance of its transport and documentary obligations. The purpose of the law is clear — the state receives information about persons entering the country and being carried across it, and the carrier is the link that ensures the completeness of that information. The norm thus embraces all three principal modes of carriage — land, sea and air — and attaches a separate fine to each of them.
Who is the liable person
When the offence is committed, the fine is imposed on the carrier company or on the representative of the carrier company. The subject of liability may therefore be either the organisation or the concrete person acting in the company's name. This determination is also of practical importance: a violation committed by a representative is not split into a separate element, and the fine is calculated under the same norm.
Fine amounts by type of transport
The law scales the amount of the fine according to the type of transport. In the case of land transport the fine is 300 GEL. In the case of sea transport it is 1,000 GEL, and in the case of air transport — 1,500 GEL. This differentiation stems from the scale of carriage and the degree of risk: controlling persons carried by aircraft or ships is more complex, and accordingly the demand for undisturbed performance of obligations is valued more strictly.
The scope of the norm
The note to the article determines that the operation of this norm does not extend to one specific case provided for by the Law on the Legal Status of Foreigners and Stateless Persons — the obligation provided for by the first sub-paragraph of the corresponding paragraph of that law. When a concrete case is examined, it must therefore always be verified, on the one hand, which obligation has been breached and, on the other, whether it falls within that exception. This is precisely the kind of question where the involvement of a qualified specialist often changes the outcome.
The final amount of the fine depends directly on the mode of transport by which the carriage took place: 300 GEL in the case of land transport, 1,000 GEL in the case of sea transport and 1,500 GEL in the case of air transport. Accordingly, one of the frequent subjects of dispute is precisely which mode was used in the qualification. Difficult situations arise when a route combines several modes — in such cases the correctness of the qualification is especially important and requires the assessment of a specialist. When a fine is imposed, always verify that the type of transport recorded is the one by which the carriage actually took place, since a mistake at this stage changes the amount several times over.