Unauthorised use of a water body in Georgia (Art. 55)

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Unauthorised use of a water body (Art. 55)

What penalty applies for a first offence?

Under Article 55, removing or damaging a boundary marker, or arbitrarily changing the boundary strip, carries a fine from 300 to 700 lari or administrative detention for a term of ten days, with the boundary being brought back to its original condition. The fine and the detention are alternatives and are not imposed together.

What changes if the act is repeated?

For a repeated act the article provides a separate range: a fine from 1,500 to 2,000 lari. That sentence of the article names only a fine. The period within which a further act counts as repeated is not specified in the provision itself.

Do I have to restore the boundary as well as pay?

The first sentence of the article attaches the restoration of the boundary to its original condition to the sanction. What is meant is the state of affairs that existed before the act. The article sets no deadline and no procedure for that work, so those details have to be established from the case file.

My neighbour and I disagree about the boundary. Will this case settle it?

No. Article 55 assesses only the removal or damage of the marker, or the arbitrary alteration of the strip; it does not deal with title. A dispute about where the boundary actually runs is examined separately, so the outcome of the administrative case cannot be treated as confirming the boundary line.

The marker was moved by a contractor working for me. Who answers for it?

The article does not define the circle of liable persons, so it turns on the facts: who removed, damaged or shifted the marker, and on whose instruction. Keep the contract, the acceptance documents and the correspondence — they are what separates the roles in the case.

4 min·22 Aug 2026

What Article 55 protects

Article 55 of the Administrative Offences Code of Georgia protects the physical markers by which land-use boundaries are set out on the ground. The provision covers three acts: removing a boundary marker of land-use boundaries, damaging it, and arbitrarily changing the boundary strip. In all three the protected interest is the same — the reliability of the boundary as it stands in the field. The article attaches the restoration of the boundary to its original condition to the sanction, so putting the marker back does not replace the penalty — it accompanies it.

In practice these cases almost always arise between neighbouring plots. Typical situations include moving a fence over by a few metres, pulling out a boundary post or a geodetic marker, dragging or damaging it with machinery, gradually "straightening" the strip while ploughing, and shifting a marker by an amount that looks trivial but changes the boundary permanently. A protocol may be drawn up against the person who did the work with their own hands, or against the person on whose instruction it was done — that is a question of the facts of the case.