DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE

RLA PROGRAM INFORMATION

Training and technical assistance programs in Criminal Justice System are implemented in Georgia by the U.S. Department of Justice through its Office of Overseas Prosecutorial Development, Assistance and Training (DOJ/OPDAT) which has created Resident Legal Advisor Offices in US Embassies in many of the NIS countries.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) commenced assistance to Georgia in February 1999. From the beginning, DOJ's Office of Overseas Prosecutorial Development, Assistance and Training (OPDAT) has identified corruption by law enforcement officials and other public officials as the top priority of law enforcement assistance to Georgia. Anti-corruption initiatives have been the primary focus of the three permanent DOJ Resident Legal Advisors (RLA's) assigned to Georgia since 1999.

The current RLA is Peter Strasser, the former Chief of the DOJ Organized Crime Strike Force in New Orleans. He is the veteran of over 100 federal jury trials involving complex white collar and political corruption crimes. The two previous full-time RLA's were former Assistant U.S. Attorney Peter Sprung from the Southern District of New York (February 1999-November 2000) and John S. Gleason, an Assistant U.S. Attorney from Chicago (February 2001-August 2002). There were also two intermittent RLA's - Noelle Dimarco (March-July 2000) and Richard Pilger (September 2000-March 2001), federal prosecutors from Laredo, Texas and Washington, D.C., respectively.

Since 1999, DOJ/OPDAT has provided extensive technical assistance and training in combating public corruption and organized crime. Significant technical assistance and training also has been furnished by DOJ/OPDAT on criminal procedural reform, including many concepts novel to the former Soviet republic, such as jury trials and cooperative plea agreements, and on counter-narcotics measures. In the past four years, OPDAT has organized more than 60 training programs for some 350 Georgian prosecutors, law enforcement officials, parliamentarians, judges, defense lawyers and nongovernmental representatives. A number of prosecutors and law enforcement officials have participated in more than one OPDAT training program. Most of the training programs have been conducted either in Georgia by the RLA or by the International Law Enforcement Academy in Budapest, Hungary. OPDAT also has organized regional conferences in Armenia and Russia and study missions to the U.S. for Georgian governmental and nongovernmental participants.