On November 13, the opposition United National Movement (UNM) claimed that Ben Mallet, British national political advisor, was refused admission into Georgia. According to the information, Mallet was supposed to return to Georgia a week ago to serve as a political consultant for the UNM and Strategy Aghmashenebeli. 

"However, he was denied entry at the border. Ben is a political consultant that UNM just employed. He was returning from France to Georgia when, for unspecified reasons, Georgia refused to let him in. I had already seen him on Thursday of last week. There's no reason to believe the government would take any action because everything was perfectly regular," UNM Spokesman Alexandre Crevaux-Asatiani noted.

The UNM accused the ruling Georgian Dream party, alleging that the ruling party is driven by a desperate dread of being transparent and of the lessons learned from past Western political campaigns. Furthermore, Crevaux-Asatiani links the occurrence to the planning for the legislative elections scheduled for next year.

Moreover, UNM chairman Levan Khabeishvili said that the government was responsible for a diplomatic scandal, posing the question, "Can you imagine that they lay a red carpet for Russian generals and [foreign minister Sergey] Lavrov, but not for a British citizen? Mallet was meant to assist them in combating the 'Russian propaganda of the Russian dream.' "They saw that this person went to our office, that he was working with us, so they did not allow him to enter because our offices and we are being watched. As it happens, this Russian party is not focused on the occupation; rather, it is focusing on the opposition," he stated.