TBILISI, Oct 24 (Reuters) - Georgian authorities on

Thursday raided the local offices of U.S. technology services

company Concentrix ( CNXC ) and searched the homes of two

employees of the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based think

tank, Georgian media reported.

The searches took place two days before a parliamentary

election widely viewed as a test of whether the South Caucasus

country returns to Moscow's orbit or maintains its traditional

pro-Western orientation.

Georgia's four main opposition parties are aiming to deprive

the ruling Georgian Dream party of its constitutional majority,

while Georgian Dream's billionaire founder Bidzina Ivanishvili

has vowed to ban opposition parties if his group clinches

victory on Saturday.

Georgia's Interpress news agency said that members of the

Finance Ministry's investigative arm had entered Concentrix's ( CNXC )

office complex in Tbilisi on Thursday and were conducting a

search.

The California-based company did not immediately reply to a

request for comment outside of working hours.

Separately, Georgian investigators searched the homes and

offices of two non-profit workers who conduct research on

Russian disinformation in the Caucasus, Interpress reported on

Thursday, citing the husband of one of them.

Sopo Gelava and Eto Buziashvili are both Tbilisi-based

researchers at the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research

Lab, which studies global disinformation efforts.

They were not available for comment on Thursday. The

Atlantic Council did not immediately reply to a comment request.

Gelava's husband, Giorgi Noniashvili, a member of the

pro-Western Federalists opposition party which is not taking

part in the election, told Interpress that the family's

electronic devices had been seized during the search.

"In a situation where the government is putting a lot of

pressure on civil society (the search) raises a lot of question

marks, especially three days before the elections," Interpress

cited Noniashvili as saying.

Relations between Tbilisi and the West have deteriorated

rapidly since May, when Georgian Dream passed a law on "foreign

agents" that has been condemned by domestic critics and Western

analysts as authoritarian and Russian-inspired.

The law requires organisations receiving more than 20% of

their funding from abroad to register as "agents of foreign

influence".