The Summary describes the conduct of Next and its personnel. This page asks whether it constitutes the crime of coercion under Article 150 of the Criminal Code of Georgia. Arrogation, the crime of enforcing a claim by one's own hand, is examined separately.

The provision

Article 150(1), in the official translation:

"Illegal restriction of a person's freedom to act, i.e. coercing him/her physically or mentally to perform or not to perform an action, performance of or abstaining from performance of which is his/her right, or to make him/her experience an influence against his/her own will"

Four elements: an action the person has the right to perform or to refuse; coercion, physical or mental; illegality; and, as the result, a restriction of the freedom to act. The Article needs no damage, unlike Article 360, and no fear, unlike Article 151. Part 2 raises the penalty when the act is committed by a group of persons, among other cases.

Three times Next has demanded my signature. Each time the signature was my right to refuse: private persons are free to enter into contracts or not (Article 319(1) of the Civil Code), and no one is obliged to waive a claim. Each time the demand came with pressure. The three episodes are set out below, most recent first; then the rules they broke.

July 2026: the waiver, or the stairs

Since July 1, 2026, the elevators stop at my floor only for holders of a chip. On July 3, Saba Tsiskaradze, the manager, put the condition for a chip in writing: "You can receive elevator chips any time you sign the Act of handover". The act is a one-page receipt whose last clause has the parties "confirm that it contains no ambiguous provisions and they have no claims against each other." I asked for that clause to be deleted; Next refused. On August 17 the director, Levan Otarishvili, restated the condition as the building's rules. My request of August 18 for chips without conditions has not been answered. Nino Kikava, manager, was present at the meeting of July 1, confirmed the condition and refused to delete the clause, as evidenced by the fact she received the record of the meeting and Saba's corrections, and had nothing to add.

The action coerced is a legal act: a waiver of every claim I hold against Next Hospitality. The coercion is my co-owned elevators. Article 150 fits it in both of its forms: the standing condition, sign and it stops, coerces me to perform an action that is my right to refuse; and the lockout itself, 91 days of it, is an influence I am made to experience against my will. On July 4 I came home with heat exhaustion and had to plead to be let up.

January 2026: the agreements, or the “regulations”

On January 27, 2026, Saba wrote that he had to prepare "a management and service contract, which you will need to sign". I answered that a contract I need to sign is coercion. His reply both denies and restates it: "we are not forcing you […] the same two agreements must be prepared in your name and signed by you. This is not coercion - it is simply compliance with the existing regulations". The next day, sending the two documents: "a requirement under the current regulations, as the building has an aparthotel status"; an hour later, "a contract requested from residents of apart-hotel buildings due to existing regulations in the country". In the same hour he charged me $608 under the contract I had not signed, stating it is "a matter of regulatory compliance".

A week later, Next's lawyer, Gvantsa Lomadze, said the same: Next is "required by applicable regulations to have such agreements in place with all unit owners" (message); the signature is "a mandatory condition applicable to all unit owners," an obligation that "arises from the nature and legal status of the complex itself" (message). She edited that message. Her formal reply of July 7 named the obligations at last: the developer's own, undertaken before the authorities. In nineteen months of correspondence the only regulation ever identified is the apart-hotel status of the complex, which binds the developer and not me.

Here the instrument was not the elevator; Saba never mentioned it in that exchange. It was uncertainty. A manager and a lawyer told a foreign owner, in writing, that he would stand in breach of the regulations of the country, and that the solution was signing. What the regulations were, neither said. A person in that position cannot verify the claim without studying much of the legislation of Georgia, which is what it took me, months later, to learn that the obligation does not exist. Until then the discomfort was the point: it was the pressure, and the signature was the way out of it. That is coercion of the mind, no matter how many times Saba denies it and how many “🙏🏼” emojis he uses. Next's specialist had already said why the signature was wanted: "every owner signs, because now you have to pay, so there has to be a basis for it". There was no basis, and they knew it.

February 2025: payment, or no renovation

The pattern was set a year earlier, by Lolita Samnidze, before my renovation could begin. Next's price for letting my materials into the freight elevator, for the paperwork of meters already installed, and for waste disposal my wife had declined, was GEL 8,105.98 and a signature. The condition on the meters was explicit: "you won't be able to use it until you settle the outstanding amount." The condition on the elevator was put as a choice: "If you think you won't make it in time, then pay the amount for bringing up materials later, and start the renovation after the tourist season ends", that is, pay now or wait eight months. When my wife asked for the concessions Lola had made by chat to be written into the contract, the answer was: "As for the contract, unfortunately nothing will change; if it suits you, sign it". I signed and paid the same day. Access to the lift then came by reception, "say that you've paid" (message).

The actions coerced: paying for a lift I co-own and for services I did not want, and signing a contract on Next's terms. The coercion: my own meters, and my renovation, held until I did. That my wife accepted the terms does not change the analysis; coercion is judged by what came before the assent, and the conditions came first. Fortunately, the contract was merely transactional.

Illegality

Every owner may use the common property (Article 7(2) of the Law on Homeowners' Associations), and a co-owner's share of use may not be impaired without his consent (Article 957(3) of the Civil Code). A claim against an owner is pursued in court (Article 21(3)) or registered against the apartment (Article 14(5)); it is not enforced by locking him out. No law obliges an owner to sign a management or service contract with the developer's company; the only regulation Next has ever named, the apart-hotel status, obliges the developer. Conditioning my use of my co-owned elevators and my utility meters on a signature or a payment is what makes the restriction "illegal" in the words of Article 150. Details on the Homeowners' Association page.

A group of persons

Article 150(2)(b) covers coercion "by a group of persons." Under Article 27, a crime is committed by a group when two or more principals take part in it, with or without prior agreement.

In July 2026 the condition was set by two managers: Nino in person at the meeting of July 1, and Saba in writing two days later. Nino, who by Saba's own correction had requested the act from Next's legal department, confirmed it. The director restated it, and the reception applied it to me and to others, according to their reports. Next had announced the system nine months before switching it on: the agreement was prior (Article 27(2)).

In January 2026 the demand likewise came from two principals: the manager on January 27 and 28, and the lawyer on February 4, to the same effect, a week apart. Only the demand of February 2025 was one person's, and only that count falls under part 1.

The Code's "repeatedly" (Article 150(2)(c)) does not apply: under Article 15 a crime is repeated only when committed by a person already convicted of it. What the three episodes constitute instead is cumulative crimes: several acts under the same Article, for none of which anyone has been convicted. Each counts.

Coercion and arrogation

The payment demanded since July 2026 is analyzed under both this Article and Article 360. Article 16(2) provides that where an act falls under a general and a special provision, the special one applies; arrogation may be the special form of coercion for the enforcement of a claimed right. Whether it is, and which provision the payment falls under, is a question for a court. It does not touch the signatures: Next has no right, actual or supposed, to my name on a waiver of claims or on its contracts. That is not the exercise of a right. It is the extraction of a legal act, and Article 150 exists for it.