What theft of irrigation water means
Article 96⁴ of the Administrative Offences Code of Georgia governs a single act: theft of irrigation water from a melioration system. The article makes both natural and legal persons liable and sets different amounts for each. In practice the case may concern an unauthorised connection to a channel, a pump switched onto the system, or water diverted where the supply has not been formalised in the established manner. For this particular offence the Code devotes a separate provision, Article 290⁹, to how the protocol must reach you and how the fine is enforced, so the two articles have to be read together. The second of them is the one that decides what happens if you never see the document at all.
The fines the article sets
Article 96⁴ produces four amounts, and they follow two variables — the type of person and whether the act is a first or a repeated one:
- theft of irrigation water from a melioration system — a fine of 250 GEL on a natural person;
- the same act by a legal person — a fine of 500 GEL;
- a repeated act by a natural person — a fine of 500 GEL;
- a repeated act by a legal person — a fine of 1,000 GEL.
The article sets no other amount. It also does not define the period over which repetition is counted; that is governed by other provisions of the Code. What Article 96⁴ does fix is the consequence: on repetition the fine is 500 GEL for a natural person and 1,000 GEL for a legal person.
How the protocol reaches you
Article 290⁹ regulates service in detail, and this is the part that most often catches people out. The protocol is sent to the person at their place of registration, at the registration address, unless the document was handed to them personally. If the item cannot be delivered, the carrier makes an appropriate note on it and returns the protocol; it is then sent again to the same registration address no earlier than the 14th day and no later than the 30th day after its return. The protocol is also treated as served where an adult member of the person's family at the registration address refuses to accept it twice. For the purposes of that rule, family members are the spouse, child, grandchild, parent, sister, brother, grandmother, grandfather, and any other adult living with the person.
Publication and the 30-day window
If the re-sent protocol also fails to be delivered, the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Agriculture of Georgia publishes it publicly on its own website. The protocol is then deemed served on the 30th day after publication, and the rule governing publication is approved by the Minister of Environmental Protection and Agriculture. The fine must be paid within 30 days of service of the protocol. If it is not paid within that period, the protocol is enforced compulsorily under Article 291 of the Code and the Law of Georgia "On Enforcement Proceedings", on the basis of a writ of execution issued by a duly authorised person and submitted for enforcement. In other words, once the window closes the matter moves out of administrative proceedings and into enforcement proceedings under Article 291 of the Code and the Law on Enforcement Proceedings.
Where legal representation changes the outcome
Disputes in this category split into two layers — the act itself, and the service procedure. The points genuinely open to argument are:
- whether water was in fact taken from a melioration system, and taken in the sense the article describes;
- whether you are the person to whom the act is attributed, rather than another user of the same infrastructure;
- whether the fine was calculated at the natural-person or the legal-person rate;
- whether the stages of service under Article 290⁹ were observed — the address, the note on return, the timing of the second dispatch, the publication;
- the date from which the 30-day period was counted, and whether the ground for enforcement had actually arisen.
A lawyer's contribution here is to test that chain link by link. Service in this article works partly as a legal fiction: you can be treated as having received a document you never held, and once the payment window has run the conversation is about enforcement rather than about whether the fine was justified. That is why the dates on the postal item are often worth more to a defence than any argument about the water.
What to bring
Before a consultation, gather what reconstructs both the underlying fact and the history of service:
- the protocol, or the version of it published on the Ministry's website;
- postal data — the dates of dispatch, return and second dispatch;
- proof of your registration address and information about who lives there;
- any water-use contract or payment records, if you have them;
- documentation for the plot and the irrigation infrastructure, photographs, witness details;
- information about earlier fines, if repetition is in issue.