“Shine is not substance.”

It is a conversation that quickly leaves the usual register. Anyone expecting a sales pitch for a destination country is mistaken. Mathias Gottwald — consistently “Patron” rather than CEO or founder in his own public persona — talks less about tax rates than about structures, history and attitude, and he contradicts the premise of some questions before answering them. That is exactly what makes the conversation interesting.

Substance, not a shell company

TF: Mr Gottwald, the first question every critical reader asks: since when have you been in Georgia — and is GOTT WALD Holding real substance there or a shell?

I prepared this step from 2018 on, together with two friends — there were three of us. Since December 2024, GOTT WALD Holding has been an operating LLC in Georgia, with real substance: our own office, our own network. Through our platform gottwald.world we work with more than 400 people — today closer to 700 — and not as classic employees. Whoever is registered with us receives new calls for tender via the back end matching their profile. If we need a UX designer, all UX designers see the brief with all parameters and decide for themselves whether to join. It is a global network — from Australia via Fiji, Peru, Canada, Europe, South Africa to Asia. But everything is steered from one point: Tbilisi.

It is a remarkable construction: a worldwide, project-based network conducted from the Georgian capital. The “shell company” accusation that is quickly levelled at such structures comes to nothing here — the operating substance sits in the back end and in the office on the ground.

TF: Why “Patron” and not CEO or founder?

In my language, CEOs are paid watches that run so the numbers add up in the end. That is not me. And “founder” is too little for me — having founded something does not mean living it. A Patron is someone who protects, shelters, takes care of something. Who stands for the structural and essential to endure — and to grow in a values-driven way. This is not about quick cash, but about protection: of honesty, clarity, truth, openness, transparency. And above all the protection of our system.

TF: You earn from this very topic. A conversation costs from €111, the holding lives on mandates. Why should anyone believe you who doesn’t already trust you?

The €111 is more of a symbolic contribution. If I look at what that time is worth, I shouldn’t offer it at that price at all. For mandates I charge between €500 and €700 an hour — consider the dedication with which I offer the same to any ordinary person for €111. No one has to believe me. Either someone understands what I communicate, has their questions and topics they want to discuss — or not. That is precisely society’s problem: that we place value on what others think. We are values-driven, not profit-driven.

This is where I press: isn’t the €111 conversation the funnel into the expensive mandate after all?

No. One to one — one person with another, and together you are one and move something. The high-priced mandates do not hang on this conversation. The €111 is deliberately chosen so that the small player too gets the information the big ones rely on. It is meant to be a low barrier to entry — for the sole trader still sitting in Germany today, wondering whether Georgia or another country is relevant for them, but who cannot pay €600 or €700 an hour. €111 for the chance that a life can change — anyone pays that gladly.

“It is all built on sand”

The wake-up call, Gottwald says, is not one — more an ongoing task. Since 2017 he has advised and supported people in laying their structures so the state cannot reach in without limit. In fact the situation is tightening on both sides: in Germany the exit-tax rules were tightened in 2025, and Georgia too has adjusted its requirements for sole traders — the physical place where the work is performed remains the decisive criterion. Anyone who believes everything is done with a single click is increasingly mistaken.

TF: What is the most expensive error you keep seeing among entrepreneurs?

The belief that the system put in front of them is the only one they have to serve. Over 90 percent of SMEs in the German-speaking region think this way. There are excellent tradespeople, engineers, developers, coaches — and they are crushed by taxes, requirements and regulations to the point where they aren’t even allowed to keep up in global competition. In the DACH region the entrepreneur is the servant: he carries all the risk, answers for everything — and earns the least of all per hour for his pure labour. Something is wrong there. Whoever recognises this builds a second pillar outside these structures — not to flee, but to be master of their own company again.

TF: Dubai is still seen by many as a safe haven. You see it differently.

I have been warning since 2018, 2019, since the geopolitics shifted: Dubai is built on sand. It is an illusion kept artificially alive — and when it cracks, it goes under. In 2022 I warned friends who were close to me. They were blind. Today we look at where we stand: the property market is under pressure. Once zero taxes, then the corporate tax came — and now they’re courting entrepreneurs to come back and invest.

Here a clarification is needed that Gottwald himself demands: the United Arab Emirates introduced a federal corporate tax for the first time on 1 June 2023 — nine percent on profits above AED 375,000 (Federal Decree-Law 47/2022). And the region remains geopolitically exposed: after the outbreak of the US–Iran conflict in late February 2026, the Dubai market visibly came under pressure.

There is a saying attributed to the father of today’s ruler: his grandfather rode the camel from dune to dune. His father drove the first Mercedes. He himself drives a Mercedes. And yet he knows: his grandchildren will ride camels through the dunes again. Because everything moves in cycles — all the way up, all the way down. And what is built on sand ends up in the sand. This infrastructure has no foundation. Sand was never turned into stone. The harder you press on it, the more you slide.

Gottwald was on the ground and, by his own account, held conversations at genuine leadership level — not with self-styled investment coaches, but with decision-makers. He stays fair nonetheless: Dubai will keep working “in a certain way”. But it has lost its status as a safe haven.

Northern Cyprus: a promise without a land register

The tone sharpens on Northern Cyprus. Gottwald calls it a de facto annexed territory recognised by no state in the world except Turkey — and points to the geopolitical situation. This is real and verifiable: at a trilateral summit in Jerusalem on 22 December 2025, Israel, Greece and the Republic of Cyprus agreed to deepen their security and defence cooperation; the three signed a military work plan for 2026 on 28 December 2025 in Nicosia — against the backdrop of growing tensions with Turkey. The Eastern Mediterranean is, soberly viewed, a zone of tension.

TF: Put the property problem in a nutshell for a layperson.

You should ask yourself the question: who seriously believes that on an unrecognised island there is real law and real order? It is precisely the lack of recognition that makes it a grey zone — and thus the dreamed-of “independent haven” that is in truth a war zone, economically and physically. Company constructs with accounts can be relocated. But everything physical — property, and all the more one’s centre of life — means playing Russian roulette with your money and your life. And the probability that you lose is close to one hundred percent.

TF: You often point to Cyprus 2013, when 47.5 percent of large deposits at Bank of Cyprus were seized overnight. Why is that the decisive proof for you?

One of my mentors taught me: learn history, understand history, live in the present, create the future. Whoever does not know history does not perceive the present and cannot shape the future. Cyprus 2013 is not an isolated case but a pattern. It will return — and next time it will hit above all those who bet on quick gains without doing their homework. Whoever knows history also knows the future.

Georgia: strength — and honest limits

The central part of the conversation. What makes Georgia different?

Georgia has substance, a history, a position of its own. I know the ministerial level, I have met decision-makers who deliberately define themselves neither pro-Europe nor pro-Russia. They say: we are the Switzerland of Eurasia. I even think they are better than Switzerland — internationally connected, they talk to everyone, with Russians, Europeans, Chinese, and do business with all of them. But they stay true to themselves. That comes from their recent history: the war of 2008 ran through every family. The generation leading today wants to spare their children and grandchildren that. From this follows a deliberately diplomatic, free path — a country that does not want to beg, but to grow in beauty and clarity. I was there. I saw it. It is not a single structure — it is a collective, a whole society that has been through real suffering.

Then the reality check — and here it shows that this conversation is no advertising brochure.

TF: The 1-percent rule. Honestly explained, without false hope.

I would never say “1 percent for everyone” — that would be a lie. The small-business status applies up to GEL 500,000 annual turnover; above that it becomes 3 percent. And it does not apply to every activity — certain sectors are excluded. That is why the analysis always comes first: who does what? Where does a relocation even make sense? Which activity belongs to which sector, what is ultimately taxable on what? There is no one-size-fits-all recipe. But there is a workable recipe for everyone.

TF: And territorial taxation? It’s sold as “completely tax-free”. Is that true?

No, and I say so openly. “Completely tax-free” is a lie. Passive foreign income generally remains tax-free. But work I perform physically in Georgia counts as a Georgian source and is taxable — even if the client is abroad and the money never flows to Georgia. It is not at all about paying no taxes. On the contrary: paying taxes matters to me, because a system everyone benefits from has to be kept running. The only difference is whether that apparatus becomes overreaching — as in the DACH region, where in the end often only half is left, of already-taxed money — or whether it is fair and predictable. I call that fair play: for both sides. If the entrepreneur does not survive, in the end the state dies.

TF: The Estonian model — 15 percent only on distributed profits, zero on reinvestment. What does that mean in practice?

Every investment by an entrepreneur creates added value: more company value, more jobs, more revenue. Not only he benefits, but the whole system. And then he is to be punished for exactly that added value already at the point of investing? The Estonian model flips it: whoever reinvests pays zero. Tax is due only on what is withdrawn. My grandparents’ generation would turn in their graves at what citizens are expected to bear here today.

Then the most uncomfortable passage. For Georgia has a downside that must be named: the internationally criticised “foreign-agent law” of 2024, the frozen EU accession process, the Russia-controlled territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. How does that square with a “rule-of-law alternative”?

These points are real, and I do not gloss over them. The foreign-agent law is sharply criticised in the West because it obliges foreign-funded organisations to register — one has to know that. Georgia has de facto not pursued EU accession on the terms offered. I read this as the sovereign decision of a country that does not want to be co-opted by anyone — others see a risk in it. Both are legitimate. Anyone who needs EU legal certainty and Schengen is wrong in Georgia. Anyone seeking a sovereign location that talks to everyone and submits to no one is right. Everyone has to weigh this for themselves — and I say openly for whom it therefore does not fit.

It is the most honest answer of the conversation — and at the same time the one that reveals Gottwald’s stance most clearly: he rates Georgia’s stubborn independence as a strength. You don’t have to share that assessment. But putting it openly on the table is what distinguishes the conversation from any glossy pitch. Anyone looking for the critical counter-perspective on Georgia and other “freedom paradises” will find it in our fact-check “The Great Escape Illusion”.

The exit-tax trap — and why it doesn’t hit the big players

Here Gottwald becomes fundamental. Asked how he would explain German exit taxation to a master craftsman with a GmbH, he contradicts the premise — and with an understandable argument.

I will never publicly explain how to get around it. That would help the system close its own gaps — and I won’t do that. What I do say is: with clean, forward-looking structure the pain doesn’t even arise. We do that in a legally compliant way, in cooperation with globally leading firms. But whoever travels the country as a picture of damage has not understood their work. Certain things take time and order: first think, then exchange, then communicate, then act.

For the reader, let it nonetheless be recorded what the trap consists of — because you can only avoid it if you know it:

The state reaches for the natural person, the private individual. How shareholdings and companies are structured above that is the decisive question. This is exactly where the big players have positioned themselves so the rules don’t hit them — while the small ones, who don’t know, get caught in full. The system is not equal for everyone. It is just built to look that way. My drive is to give the small entrepreneur the access only corporations used to have.

What people most often get wrong, he says, is the reflex to hurry:

What I warn everyone against: quickly grabbing the phone and prematurely opening a foreign account somewhere. Highly risky — regardless of whether a single cent ever runs through it, the demonstrable connections alone are a problem. No snap decisions. Everything needs a foundation. Homework first, then the first action. None of us is unique — every problem has already been had by someone in this world. So somewhere the solution already exists too. Whoever understands this no longer sees problems, but opens the catalogue of solutions.

His mentor, Gottwald recounts, taught him that besides mother and father there are two people almost as important in professional life: the lawyer and the tax adviser. But the two alone don’t do it.

It needs something above them — a bell, a dome that arches over everything, that knows beginning and end and orchestrates everyone in between. And a principle: no one — neither lawyer nor tax adviser nor the state — should ever know one hundred percent. The goal is not just to arrive where you want to be, but to be independent there too. Otherwise you only fall from one collector into the next — out of the frying pan into the fire. We want the living, healthy paradise, not a new prison with a better view.

Who Georgia is not for — and where the line runs

TF: Who is Georgia the wrong choice for?

I turn the question around: who is Germany, Austria, Switzerland the right choice for? It is not about Georgia instead of Germany for me. It is not about flight. There are paths and structures in which Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Georgia work together — so that in the right case you don’t even have to leave your home country and still have everything in order. You have to see the whole as a whole. We are not one country in this world. We are one country of many — and many countries are everything, and everything is the world.

He does draw a line, though — just a different one than expected.

Whoever does not carry the principle of Peace, Love & Harmony for more Humanity within them — not only in outward presentation, but inside, in the processes, in how they treat others — we don’t work with. No matter what they pay. Then there is a sincerely meant “all the best” — and a clear no. For me that stands firmer than the amen in church.

The most common illusion people come to him with, he says, is that of absolute freedom.

As long as we pay taxes, as long as there are rules and statutes, no one is completely free. Many believe a restructuring will suddenly grant them a freedom they never had. I take that illusion from them. But for those who fit us in values, we show paths — and at the end there is a feeling of freedom and a financial availability they never had before.

“I offer you my hand”

Towards the end the conversation grows quieter. The question of whether he isn’t a freedom-seller himself — only with Georgia instead of Dubai — he counters calmly.

The difference is: I never claim another country is the solution. It is not about Georgia instead of Dubai or Germany instead of somewhere. It is about freedom, independence, self-determination. Everyone has an origin, something they call home. One is drawn away, another likes to stay. The goal is to be able to shape your life so that you decide freely where you live. You have arrived when you have understood: you may be wherever you want.

And what distinguishes the €111 from an ordinary brochure off the internet, he says, is not the information — it is the depth.

It is about leading a free, fully self-determined life in your self-defined home — with the maximum return from the most precious good you have: your own time. And the return should land where it belongs. Seventy percent or so should stay with you, not the state. Capital is the capacity to act. The capacity to act is freedom. Whoever has no capital has no capacity to act — and thus no freedom.

There remains the scenario that troubles everyone: what if Georgia scraps its model tomorrow? Here Gottwald has an argument that rests not on trust but on law.

Georgia itself protects against that. The state has given everyone who founds today a guarantee: the legislation that applies on the founding day remains in force for them for ten years. Whoever signs in June signs under today’s statutes — with ten years of security. That is called commitment. On it you build trust, from it comes stability, from that the capacity to act, from that freedom.

This is verifiable: the Georgian investment-protection law (Law of Georgia on Promotion and Guarantees of Investment Activity) states that a new legislative act worsening investment conditions does not apply to investments already made for ten years — the investor continues their activity under the previously applicable law.

TF: What is the most uncomfortable truth about your own business?

I don’t have one like that. What I encountered as resistance was never a contradiction for me, but a process of learning. Whoever asks gets an honest answer. And if something later does turn out to be a contradiction, I am the first to admit it. But then it was part of the path that brought me to where I stand today — and that enables me to speak about things others don’t know.

At the end, asked for the one sentence the reader should leave with, he grows almost still:

I experienced it myself. I felt it. I went through it. That is why I found solutions. And I am glad to simply offer you my hand. The rest we will see. From the heart.

— Mathias Gottwald, Patron · GOTT WALD Holding LLC