Who Article 165¹⁰ applies to
Article 165¹⁰ of the Georgian Code of Administrative Offences has a narrow addressee: its first part regulates the conduct of the insolvency manager. It is not concerned with the outcome of the insolvency proceedings, and it is not concerned with the merits of the manager's commercial decisions. It targets one specific procedural duty — the publication of a report.
That duty is, in substance, a transparency instrument. The debtor's financial position, and the form chosen for realising the estate, are precisely the two matters on which creditors, the debtor and the other participants in the process build their own decisions. If the information is not published, those participants cannot follow what is happening to the estate, and it is that gap which the law attaches administrative liability to.
It is also worth bearing in mind that the duty is not an internal matter for the manager alone. For a creditor or for the debtor, an unpublished report means a shortage of exactly the information on which they have to base their own decisions — about the realisation of the estate, or about their own claim. A case of this kind therefore tends to unfold in a wider context than a single isolated administrative episode.
The duty whose breach is penalised
The first part of the article makes it an offence for the insolvency manager to fail to comply with the obligation to publish a report on two matters:
- the financial condition of the debtor;
- the selected form of realisation of the property.
One detail deserves emphasis. Article 165¹⁰ does not itself specify where the report must be published, in what form, or by what deadline. It describes only the situation in which such an obligation exists and has not been fulfilled. That is why the assessment of a case always breaks into two steps: first, whether the particular obligation existed in the particular proceedings, and only then whether it was performed. Skipping the first step is the most common way these cases are argued badly.
That sequence is not a formality. If the file shows only that no report was published, without showing which obligation existed in these particular proceedings and what it rested on, the first step has simply been skipped. That is usually where the argument starts.
The fine the law provides
Conduct falling under the first part of Article 165¹⁰ carries a fine of 500 GEL. Under the second part, the same act committed repeatedly carries a fine of 1,500 GEL.
Both figures are fixed. Neither is a range within which the amount could be reduced, and that has a direct consequence for defence strategy: there is nothing to argue about the sum itself. The whole dispute moves to whether the obligation existed, whether it was performed, and — where the second part is invoked — whether repetition is actually made out. Article 165¹⁰ provides for no penalty of any other kind.
What "repeatedly" means here
Because the second part triples the fine, the word "repeatedly" becomes a dispute in its own right. The article does not define the period within which a second act counts as repeated, and it does not say whether several omissions within a single set of proceedings amount to one act or to several. Those questions are resolved on the facts of the case and under other provisions of the Code. So check the decision carefully to see which earlier fact the finding of repetition rests on, and whether that earlier fact is documented at all.
Where the dispute is decided
Since the amount is fixed, the argument moves entirely onto questions of fact and classification:
- whether the specific obligation the protocol relies on existed in these proceedings;
- whether the report was published, and what evidences the fact and the date of publication;
- whether the allegation concerns both matters — the financial condition and the selected form of realisation — or only one of them;
- whether the correct part was applied: the only thing separating 500 GEL from 1,500 GEL is repetition;
- whether the protocol records the manager's own explanation.
The work of a lawyer in this category is largely the reconstruction of a documentary chronology: proof of publication, the stages of the proceedings, and the sequence of the manager's actions have to be set against the version described in the protocol. That matters most when the case is opened under the second part, where the exposure triples on a single contested finding.
What to bring
Gather the material that shows both that the obligation existed and how it was handled:
- the protocol of administrative offence and the decision, with the date of service;
- the document appointing you as manager and the core file of the insolvency proceedings;
- the report itself on the debtor's financial condition and the selected form of realisation;
- evidence of publication, bearing a date;
- the material on any earlier episode, if the protocol alleges repetition;
- correspondence with creditors and other participants in the proceedings.