Zurab Pataradze

Zurab Pataradze (Georgian: ზურაბ პატარაძე; born 12 February 1973) is a Georgian diplomat and government official who was Chairman of the Government of the Autonomous Republic of Adjara between 15 July 2016 and 21 July 2018.

After working for a Batumi-based bank office in the mid-1990s, Pataradze joined the state service in 1996, first at an anti-organized crime unit of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Adjara and then the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Georgia in 2000.

In 2004 Pataradze became a second secretary at the Georgian embassy to Russia in charge of consular service; after Georgia and Russia cut direct diplomatic relations in 2008, Pataradze served as a consular officer at the Georgian interests section at the Swiss embassy in Moscow until 2009.

[1] In July 2016, Zurab Pataradze was nominated by President of Georgia Giorgi Margvelashvili as the head of the government of Adjara, an autonomous region on the Black Sea coast, after the incumbent Archil Khabadze announced his resignation just three months before the scheduled elections.

Pataridze narrowly won a confidence vote in the region's legislature on 15 July 2016.