GeorgiaGeorgia’s dispute with Enka Renewables over $350 million payout for HPP moves to US courtsby Helena Bedwell• 3 min readShare▲The construction site of the now-suspended Namakhvani HPP. Photo via Civil Georgia.In a continuation of the Georgian government’s long-running dispute with Turkish construction giant Enka Renewables over the construction of a hydropower plant, a US court has ordered Tbilisi to pay Enka more than $350 million plus interest, months after a French court suspended the payment after Tbilisi said that immediate payment would damage the country’s economy. The Georgian government has said the procedure is not final and the appeal is ongoing. The dispute traces back to an agreement signed years ago between the Georgian government and Enka to build the large-scale Namakhvani Hydropower Plant in the Rioni Valley. The project sparked fierce public opposition and sustained protests, and in September 2021 Enka abandoned it, announcing it was terminating its agreement with the government. The International Court of Arbitration ordered Georgia to pay Enka Renewables in 2024 — a ruling suspended by the French Court of Appeals in February 2026. In response, Enka Renewables took the case to the US. The decision, issued on September 11, 2026, clears the way for enforcement of an international arbitration award that Georgia had spent months trying to avoid. Enka had filed a petition with the US District Court for the District of Columbia asking US courts to recognise and enforce a ruling handed down by a Paris arbitration tribunal in December 2024, which had ordered Georgia to pay the company $383.2 million. ‘The main ongoing process is in the Paris arbitrage, we have appealed and the main procedures are there and we have asked for the annulment of this decision and expect the answer no earlier than the end of this year’, Justice Minister Beka Dzamashvili told reporters on Wednesday in televised comments on the US court’s decision. Economist and former National Bank Governor Roman Gotsiridze called Dzamashvili’s statements misleading and argued that the Paris arbitration ruling was final and could not be appealed. Gotsiridze added that the government only applied for the postponement of the ruling’s enforcement because Georgia did not have money available in its budget to pay Enka Renewables. On Thursday, Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze accused the ‘deep state’ and ‘global war party’ — terms the ruling party uses to describe shadowy forces controlling the West — of disrupting work on the Namakhvani HPP. ‘All of this happened several years ago. There was direct sabotage; protests were organised without any grounds, which was then followed by the decision not to build the hydropower plant’, he said. ‘Let me remind you of the context: at that time, foreign agents were much stronger, while the state was much weaker. Ultimately, this led to what happened’, he continued, adding that ‘agents’ are much weaker today following the passing of foreign agent laws in the country. Enka turned to US courts because the US is a signatory to the 1958 New York Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards, which allows parties to international disputes to pursue enforcement through American jurisdiction. Enforcement had been on hold pending related proceedings in the French courts, but the latest ruling allows the process to move forward. The case involves a contract between Tbilisi and Enka Renewables to build and operate the Namakhvani HPP in western Georgia, according to financial statements issued by Enka’s parent company, Enka Insaat. The document confirmed that, as of 31 December 2021, ENKA Renewables had written off capitalised $40.4 million in the property, the HPP, and its equipment. It was not immediately clear whether the Georgian government had purchased the disposed assets, although the contract allowed the investor to request the government to buy them. Then-Prime Minister Irakli Gharibashvili — now imprisoned — said in June 2021 that the project would not proceed in its existing form. According to the arbitration tribunal, that decision violated the investment agreement, which gave Enka the right to challenge government actions before an arbitral panel in the event of a breach. Georgia and Enka clashed over the value of assets transferred as part of the wind-down: the presiding judge found Enka had handed the assets over at fair market value, while Georgia disputed that evaluation and refused to pay, also denying it had breached its contractual obligations. The case went before the International Court of Arbitration in Paris starting in May 2022. Nearly two years later, the tribunal found Georgia had materially breached the agreement and ordered it to pay Enka the full value of the assets, roughly $350 million, plus interest. In January 2025, Georgia asked the Paris Court of Appeal to annul the award, while Enka simultaneously moved to begin enforcement proceedings in the US — the track that has now produced this recent ruling. Gotsiridze criticised the government’s handling of the case when speaking to OC Media, calling the payout ‘an astronomical amount of money’. He noted that combined with the separate $138 million owed to InterRAO, the sums would have been enough to build the Anaklia Port outright — referring to a long-stalled project to build a deep-sea port on Georgia’s Black Sea coast. Gotsiridze placed the blame squarely on the government, arguing that while the hydropower project itself may have had flaws, it was the state’s responsibility to resolve the matter properly. Instead of renegotiating with its partners, he said, the government. Helena Bedwell is a veteran journalist of 30 years, splitting her time between Norfolk, UK and Tbilisi, Georgia. She mainly focuses on financial stories, the government, the economy, lifestyle, and banking in Georgia. She also holds child development and psychology diplomas and is a certified translator and interpreter registered in the UK.