The Legal Framework of Organizer Defence
The figure of the organizer stands at the intersection of two norms of the Criminal Code of Georgia: Article 24 defines the organizer as the person who arranged the commission of the crime or directed its execution, as well as the person who created an organized group or led it; Article 27 governs the forms of group crime and the distribution of liability. American RICO-style "criminal enterprise" liability does not exist in Georgian criminal law: liability attaches individually to each participant under Articles 24 to 25, and the organized-group label is only an aggravating qualification sign. That is precisely why organizer defence is a matter of technical and factual analysis — establishing the boundaries of role, group form and intent. Moreover, the label of "organizer" used by the prosecution is perceived as the gravest role, and its re-qualification — downward to a mere participant or accomplice — significantly reduces the sanction frame. Such re-qualification requires not only legal but factual argumentation: who took the decisions, who distributed the roles, whose initiative lay behind the individual episodes.