Head of Georgia's border agency feels betrayed after Berezovsky enters the country

Chairman of Georgia's State Department of State Border Guard and commander of Georgia's border-guard forces Lieutenant-General Valery Tchkheidze claims that his subordinates let him down by allowing Boris Berezovsky to enter the country.

"They untimely informed and misled me. I tendered my resignation because my subordinates let me down," Tchkheidze said in an exclusive interview with RIA Novosti.

"When all this ballyhoo began I personally asked to check Berezovsky in our databases, and I was told that he was not on the wanted list. The Interpol's inquiry was discovered a few hours later," Tchkheidze said.

Asked what would happen if Berezovsky appeared in Tbilisi again, Tchkheidze noted: "If he appears, what border guards must do and what regrettably they failed to do in the small hours of December 4 night will be done." "If Berezovsky comes again he will be detained by the Georgian border guards on the border, and turned over to the respective bodies - the Interior Ministry or the Prosecutor's Office," Tchkheidze promised.

"By our information, Berezovsky has been on the wanted list since January 2003. We will find out in the course of the investigation who did not enter the data on Berezovsky being on the wanted list into the database, and why, who did not receive special mail, and who did not control," the State Department head said. He explained that "there is an order to quarterly check the wanted lists, and to weekly collate them with the Interior Ministry's data. All this was not done"