The 64-page study titled "Spin doctors to the autocrats: how European PR firms whitewash repressive regimes" examines cases of "repressive regimes" worldwide hiring Western PR professionals to improve their international and domestic image.
"Brussels-based PR firm Cambre Associates has been paid €40,000 [more than $46,200] a month to support and advise Georgia in media relations and its moves towards the EU and NATO, according to a contract from March 2013…The relations with the EU have indeed improved," the report said, noting that in 2014 Georgia signed an association agreement with the EU.
"His PR team at Cambre immediately began firefighting," the report said. Cambre issued a release in Brussels which clarified that "While not ruling out the possibility of joining such a union in the future, should it be judged in the national interest, he [Ivanishvili] stated that 'At this stage, we have no position at all.' "
The study also notes that even though Ivanishvili criticized his predecessors and opponents, including the country's former President Mikheil Saakashvili, for the heavy use of Western PR support, he himself "came to power on a veritable tide of lobbying money spent in Brussels and Washington."
According to the report, during his election campaign Ivanishvili was spending some $4 million a month on PR and lobbying conducted mainly by US experts.
