Latest news with #GiorgiBachiashvili
BBC News
3 days ago
- Business
- BBC News
Ex-aide of Georgia's most powerful man, claims he was abducted abroad
A former confidant of Georgia's most powerful man has alleged in a Tbilisi court that he was "kidnapped from abroad" last Saturday and flown back to Georgia by Bachiashvili, 39, who once headed the Co-Investment Fund for Georgia's de facto ruler, billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, accused officials of resorting to "banditry" and acting on Ivanishvili's direct told a Tbilisi court he was blindfolded for two days and then flown back "in complete violation of the law", without access to his lawyers and authorities say he was detained near a border crossing and Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze said he should be happy he was safely in Georgia. Ivanishvili's Georgian Dream party has been in power for 13 years, although the opposition considers the government and parliament "illegitimate", citing widespread allegations of election fraud last October."Today I am Ivanishvili's personal prisoner," declared Bachiashvili in court on Thursday. He is due to return to court on 9 went on the run in early March, when he fled Georgia midway through a trial that later saw him sentenced in absentia to 11 years in prison for embezzlement, which he has vehemently had been accused of misappropriating $42.7m from a Bitcoin investment deal, a case he said was politically motivated and led by Ivanishvili. Although he did not say where he had been at the time of his alleged abduction on Saturday, a close friend said on condition of anonymity that Bachiashvili had been at a hotel in Abu Dhabi when three vehicles arrived, and he was seized."He gets extradited with no lawyer, no trial, absolutely nothing," the friend told the BBC. The BBC has approached the authorities in UAE for a response to the businessman also alleged that he had been forcibly returned on a Bombardier aircraft run by Airzena, the former name of privately owned Georgian Airways. In a statement, the airline said it was impossible for anyone to "board or depart from any international airport on any airline illegally".Whatever the circumstances surrounding his return to Georgia, the State Security Service announced he had been arrested on Monday after an anonymous tip-off near the Red Bridge border crossing with crossing has been shut by Azerbaijan since the 2020 coronavirus lawyer Robert Amsterdam said this week that his client was at risk of "arbitrary detention, coercive interrogation, and abusive mistreatment".The head of Georgia's state security service, Anri Okhanashvili, said Bachiashvili had been convicted of a crime and would serve his sentence, adding that not a single hair had fallen from his head, Interpressnews agency prime minister said the businessman appeared to believe that his life was in danger. If that was the case then he should be happy he was back "in Georgia, in a safe place... in appropriate conditions". The allegations coincide with the departure of another close aide of Georgia's most powerful interior minister Vahtang Gomelauri resigned on Wednesday without giving a reason, other than to spend more time with his has in the past acted as a personal bodyguard for Bidzina Ivanishvili and he has been placed under economic sanctions from the US, the UK and several EU countries for his alleged role in violent suppression of anti-government whose estimated wealth is $4.9bn (£3.9bn), made his fortune in Russia in the 1990s in computing, metals and hero or Russian ally? The billionaire dividing GeorgiansHunger-striking journalist challenges Georgia's government from jailHe established a political party in Georgia in 2011 and won elections the following told the Guardian he had served as Ivanishvili's "right-hand man" for over a decade, managing the oligarch's vast financial empire and acting as deputy chief executive of Georgia's sovereign wealth described playing a crucial role in recovering hundreds of millions of dollars stolen from Ivanishvili by a rogue Credit Suisse adviser, successfully leading complex legal battles across multiple according to Bachiashvili, their relationship soured after Russia's invasion of Ukraine in added that Ivanishvili had operated like "a sultan and his servants" with prime ministers, judges and prosecutors, who had all made pilgrimages to his hilltop residence in the capital case mirrors that of another fallen Georgian Dream ally, businessman Giorgi Chikvaidze, who was sentenced to nine years in prison on embezzlement charges in recent weeks after publicly turning against the ruling party and claiming to possess evidence of government ties to Russian intelligence."Everyone will be held accountable sooner or later," Bachiashvili said in the dock on Thursday, promising to reveal "all the details" of what he called an international crime committed on his former boss's direct reporting by Paul Kirby and Nino Shonia.
Arab News
4 days ago
- General
- Arab News
Jailed ex-aide to Georgia kingpin claims he was snatched abroad
TBILISI: An ex-aide to Georgia's powerful tycoon Bidzina Ivanishvili said on Thursday that he had been snatched while abroad, forcibly flown back to Georgia, and arrested on his former boss's orders. Giorgi Bachiashvili, the former head of Ivanishvili's Co-Investment Fund, fled Georgia in March amid mounting legal troubles following a falling out with the country's most powerful man. The case has intensified scrutiny of the role of Ivanishvili — who wields enormous influence behind the scenes — in Georgian politics. Georgia's state security service said Tuesday it had arrested Bachiashvili, a dual Georgian-Russian national, inside Georgia, near the border with Azerbaijan, following an anonymous tip. But speaking at a court hearing Thursday, Bachiashvii said he had been blindfolded and held incommunicado for two days in an undisclosed country before being forced onto a plane and flown back to Georgia 'in complete violation of the law.' 'Acting on Bidzina Ivanishvili's orders, Georgian officials resorted to banditry and brought me back to Georgia through abduction,' he said. While abroad Bachiashvili, had been sentenced in absentia to 11 years in prison for alleged embezzlement and money laundering. 'I consider myself absolutely innocent of all charges. Today it became clear that I am a personal prisoner of Ivanishvili,' he told the court. His lawyer Robert Amsterdam has denounced the case as politically motivated and accused the Georgian authorities of abusing international legal tools to persecute dissenters. Widely seen as Georgia's key power broker, billionaire Ivanishvili is the founder and honorary chair of the ruling Georgian Dream party. He holds enormous sway over the party and the government, including the formal power to nominate its choice of prime minister. Georgian Dream, in power for more than a decade, has been accused by critics of steering the country away from the West and toward Russia — a claim it denies. Georgia was gripped by mass protests for weeks last year following a disputed parliamentary election in October and the government's subsequent decision to freeze its EU membership bid.
The Guardian
6 days ago
- General
- The Guardian
Ex-aide to Georgia's de facto leader at risk of torture, lawyers say
A former aide to the de factor leader of Georgia is at risk of torture, his lawyers have said, after he was arrested and deported to Tbilisi from his place of hiding in Dubai. Giorgi Bachiashvili fled Georgia after falling out with the billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, the honorary chair of the country's ruling party, for whom he worked for more than a decade, overseeing his personal finances. Two months ago, Bachiashvili was convicted in absentia by a Georgian court of stealing $42.7m in profits that was said to have been owed to Ivanishvili from a cryptocurrency investment. While on the run, Bachiashvili accused his former mentor of aligning Georgia with Russia out of self-interest, claiming he was willing to sacrifice 'the land, any interest for his personal wellbeing and security'. Ivanishvili, who is under US sanctions for 'undermining the democratic and Euro-Atlantic future of Georgia for the benefit of the Russian Federation' and violently repressing dissent, was prime minister of Georgia between 2012 and 2013. He is widely regarded as the controlling mind behind the current government. Friends of Bachiashvili said he travelled to Jumeirah Beach hotel in Abu Dhabi to meet a local lawyer. He was instead detained in the hotel's lobby by a group of about eight members of the local security services before being transported to a police station in Dubai and put on a flight to Georgia, the sources said. Bachiashvili, 39, was given the opportunity to call his family to inform them of his arrest but his location is not known. Robert Amsterdam, a US-Canadian human rights lawyer who has been representing Bachiashvili, said: 'We were caught completely off-guard by his arrest. He had local counsel; he had local team, and he seemed very comfortable with them. It appears he was simply arrested and then put on a plane immediately. 'We are deeply concerned about the use of torture. Georgia is notoriously dangerous and corrupt, so it's a matter of real, grave concern.' The UN committee against torture has cited 'numerous and consistent allegations' of torture by Georgian law enforcement. Amsterdam added: 'I denounce in the strongest possible terms the ongoing instrumentalisation of domestic and international law and the abuse of mechanisms of international legal cooperation in Georgia's relentless efforts to jail my client for speaking truth to power.' Bachiashvili, speaking to the Guardian earlier this month, claimed that Ivanishvili had turned Georgia into a puppet state for Vladimir Putin after realising that western countries would not tolerate his continued control over the government. He said: 'I think that up until 2022 he had an illusion that Georgia would enter the EU under Ivanishvili's shadow grip. It became evident that the EU will not accept Georgia with this sort of autocratic power.' Lawyers for Ivanishivili have denied the claims.
Reuters
6 days ago
- Business
- Reuters
Ex-aide to Georgia's most powerful man detained after fleeing fraud trial
TBILISI, May 27 (Reuters) - Georgian authorities said on Tuesday they had arrested an ex-aide to Georgia's most powerful man who fled the country earlier this year while on trial on charges of embezzling cryptocurrency worth more than $800 million from his former boss. Giorgi Bachiashvili, who says the charges were politically motivated, was sentenced in absentia to 11 years in prison for defrauding Bidzina Ivanishvili, a billionaire former prime minister who is widely seen as Georgia's de facto leader. Bachiashvili, who used to run Ivanishvili's investment fund, denies wrongdoing and has said the case aimed to punish him for breaking with Ivanishvili by publicly supporting Ukraine in its war with Russia. Georgia's State Security Service, in a statement published on Facebook, said it had arrested Bachiashvili near the country's southern borders with Armenia and Azerbaijan after receiving an anonymous tip-off. It said that Bachiashvili was under investigation for illegal border crossing. Authorities have said he fled Georgia in March by hiding inside a car before crossing into Armenia and then moving onto a third country. Robert Amsterdam, one of Bachiashvili's lawyers, said in a statement published on his firm's website that Bachiashvili had been returned to Georgia "forcibly" and that he was at risk of torture. The embezzlement charges related to a 2015 loan from Ivanishvili's Cartu Bank, which Bachiashvili had sought to establish a cryptocurrency mining business. The Georgian branch of anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International has said that there is a lack of evidence against Bachiashvili, and that the case appears to reflect Ivanishvili's financial interests. Ivanishvili, who is seen as controlling the ruling Georgian Dream party he founded, has steered traditionally pro-Western Georgia in a more pro-Russian direction since the outbreak of the Ukraine war, while clamping down on opposition at home. In December, he was sanctioned by the United States over a crackdown on protesters opposed to the Georgian government's freezing of European Union accession talks until 2028. The billionaire rarely appears in public, and has not commented on his former aide's flight or subsequent arrest.
Yahoo
7 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
‘I knew I would die in jail': how the right-hand man of Georgia's de facto ruler ended up on the run
Giorgi Bachiashvili is on the run. The urbane 39-year-old slipped a surveillance team two months ago to flee his home in Tbilisi, Georgia, midway through a trial at which he was destined to be sentenced to 11 years in jail. An Interpol red notice has been requested by the Georgian authorities asking law enforcement to find and arrest him over a $42m crime, and he further claims to have been informed by the intelligence services of two countries that there is an active plot to kill him. 'Groups from the northern Caucasus, most likely Chechens,' he said. For more than a decade, Bachiashvili worked for Bidzina Ivanishvili, the reclusive billionaire who as the honorary chair of the Georgian Dream party is widely regarded as the de facto leader of Georgia, ruling from a hilltop glass business centre and residence in Tbilisi. In December last year, Ivanishvili was put under US economic sanctions for 'undermining the democratic and Euro-Atlantic future of Georgia for the benefit of the Russian Federation'. He was further accused by the US of overseeing the violent repression of hundreds of thousands of people protesting on the streets of Tbilisi over his turn against the west and seeming alignment of Georgia with Moscow, the place he first made his fortune after the breakup of the Soviet Union. Bachiashvili said he was the businessman-cum-politician's 'closest person, right-hand man'. 'Consigliere, I would not say,' he added. 'As consiglieri do the shady stuff as well.' Arguably few people have a more intimate understanding of the enigmatic mind of Ivanishvili, Georgia's richest man, who was once an advocate of European Union membership. It is Ivanishvili who is today driving the hunt to jail Bachiashvili, the latter said, following a spectacular falling out. Bachiashvili has asked the Guardian for the location of the interview to be kept a secret due to fears for his safety. His account, albeit one from someone who has a grievance and is on the run, offers perhaps the most telling insight yet into the mentality of the man accused of bringing Georgia back into the Russian sphere, three and a half decades after the fall of the Soviet Union. 'He will sacrifice the land, any interest for his personal wellbeing and security,' claimed Bachiashvili. Bachiashvili started working on real estate deals in the Moscow office of one of Ivanishvili's companies in 2011 after his mother, a renowned eye doctor in Georgia, had mentioned to one of her regular clients her pride at her son's success at a business school in France. The patient was Ivanishvili's mother; her son was with her at the time and looking to recruit bright young things for his growing business and political empire. It was Bachiashvili, in advance of Ivanishvili's election as prime minister in October 2012, who helped sell his boss's Russian assets, which were regarded as an obstacle to electoral success given Putin's 2008 invasion in the north of the country. At the age of 26, Bachiashvili was appointed deputy chief executive of Georgia's sovereign wealth fund – a position that placed him 'always by [Ivanishvili's] side' – and soon tasked unofficially with liaising with the bankers managing the then prime minister's private wealth, he said. The 2016, Panama papers leak revealed that Ivanishvili had not disclosed he owned a company managed by Mossack Fonseca, a since-shuttered Panamanian law firm, but the company's purpose remained a mystery. 'It was owning and managing his [$1.3bn] arts portfolio stored in New York and London,' Bachiashvili said of the company, Lynden Management Ltd, which was one of his responsibilities. 'In 2022, he brought all of this art back to Georgia [because of the fear of sanctions], and in order to avoid the paying the custom duties and fees and the property tax, and in the near future, the profit tax from sales of these art pieces he enacted an offshore law … Like, that's $400m he's just taken out of the pocket of Georgia.' Related: Who is Bidzina Ivanishvili, the shadowy billionaire behind Georgia's pivot to Russia? Ivanishvili's lawyer described this claim as 'outright lies', adding: 'Using an offshore zone in itself is no crime.' During these early years, Bachiashvili had also set up a private equity fund for Ivanishvili in the Cayman Islands with the assets held in Luxembourg. This became Bachiashvili's focus after Ivanishvili, said to be uncomfortable in a public role, stood down as prime minister in 2013. But there was little change in the way the country was run, Bachiashvili said. The relationship between Ivanishvili and Georgia's various prime ministers remained that of an 'angry boss and a stupid employee', Bachiashvili said. 'I was maybe the most regular guest in the Ivanishvili residence, in his business centre,' he said. 'I would see prime ministers, judges, prosecutor general, ministers of interior, everybody walking to his meetings like employees. He would sometimes yell at them, sometimes call them worthless. It's just like a sultan and his servants.' Ivanishvili's lawyer described this claim as a 'groundless attempt to discredit Mr Ivanishvili'. The tycoon had some other peccadilloes. He is known in Georgia for his collection of zebras, peacocks and other exotic animals. There were sharks and dolphins, said Bachiashvili. He had a habit of ripping up ancient tall trees from around Georgia for his private arboretum at his summer residence in Ureki, one of four homes in the country. 'He has to own something to love it – that's his worldview,' said Bachiashvili. The trees were regarded as a source of life energy, he said. 'He was obsessed with his mortality,' said Bachiashvili. 'He's doing all these experimental, crazy procedures, such as stem cell transplants and all these crazy voodoo things. His voodoo master, Yulia Krushanova, lives with him.' Krushanova, who describes herself as an 'anti-ageing medicine specialist', is reportedly married to a Russian intelligence officer, but this could not be independently verified. Ivanshivili's lawyer denied that a 'voodoo doctor' lived with him. He said: 'These statements by Bachiashvili are absurd. I can assure you that no doctor lives with him, much less with 'occult' deviations, and no experiments are held.' Krushanova did not respond to a request for comment. Ivanishvili could blow hot and cold, Bachiashvili added, but he evidently enjoyed his financially lucrative work. 'I'm not there to change [him], I'm there to do my job, which I was doing, I think, very well,' Bachiashvili said. It was in this role that Bachiashvili discovered that an adviser at Credit Suisse, Patrice Lescaudron, was sending them 'cooked books' to hide his theft of hundreds of millions of dollars of Ivanishvili's funds. He led a successful legal battle in multiple jurisdictions to get some of the money back. Meanwhile, allegations of a rigged election in 2020 triggered concerns in the European parliament about a concentration of power in Ivanishvili's hands in a country that was on path to accession to the EU. Ivanishvili, who left Moscow in 2003, remained clear in private that Georgia's path was with the west, while still maintaining cordial relations with Putin. Then in February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine. Bachiashvili, who was by then spending more time in the US and on his own investments, including in cryptocurrency, said: 'He started telling me, 'I think this Credit Suisse saga is not actually Credit Suisse, but it's some external forces like the Americans trying to strip me of my money and take it as a ransom for Georgia to go into war with Russia.' I told him it didn't make sense. 'He would spend sometimes 30, sometimes 40 minutes on the call with me, especially while I was in the US, just airing his views on it, saying that he's 'such a type of person that even if you hold the gun up his head, he would not subdue to such things'. I thought, why is this guy talking to me about this for 40 minutes on the phone every day? Then I realised, he thinks that our line is tapped. He would sometimes say, 'Yeah, and tell your friends that I'm of this opinion.'' The Georgian government then started talking about the US and the EU as being part of a 'global war party'. Bachiashvili said: 'I think that up until 2022 he had an illusion that Georgia would enter the EU under Ivanishvili's shadow grip. It became evident that the EU will not accept Georgia with this sort of autocratic power.' A move towards Putin was the solution, he suggests. Ivanishvili's lawyer called this claim groundless and said it was under Ivanishvili that Georgia became an EU candidate state. Bachiashvili posted pro-Ukrainian messages on his Instagram account at the start of the war, which prompted a call from Ivanishvili, he claimed. 'It was the first time he was really out of his mind,' he said. 'He was yelling, he was threatening. The message was basically, 'You better stay quiet. You need to know your place.'' Ivanishvili's lawyer denied that this conversation took place. The tide had turned. And a bitcoin deal would be Bachiashvili's downfall. He had tried to get Ivanishvili interested in investing in cryptocurrency over the years but without success, Bachiashvili said. In 2015, he said he approached Ivanishvili again, but for a loan for a bitcoin investment he wished to make. Ivanishvili directed him to the bank he owned, CartuBank. A $5m loan was agreed by the bank with the caveat that the institution would reap 30% of the profits from investing the money in bitcoin, Bachiashvili said. After a year, Bachiashvili repaid the loan in full, plus the agreed kicker for the bank, he claimed. In May, 2023, Ivanishvili called to thank Bachiashvili for the latest win in the Credit Suisse legal case. But a few days later, Bachiashvili was invited to attend an interview with a prosecutor, nominally about an investigation into a hydropower plant, he said. Bitcoin was top of the agenda. Ivanishvili was claiming that he had done 'what a father would not do for a son', according to his witness statement, by being a $5m investor in the bitcoin deal. The allegation was that Bachiashvili had falsely claimed to have sold the bitcoins but instead kept them, reaping the rewards of their soaring value, and in effect stealing $42.7m in profits owed to Ivanishvili. The sole communication to Bachiashvili from his former mentor on the day of his first interrogation, he said, was a WhatsApp message to advise him to 'talk to your lawyer'. His world was crumbling around him. Bachiashvili was put on criminal trial in January this year on charges of misappropriating Ivanishvili's funds and money laundering. An offer was put to his lawyers that the criminal complaint would be dropped if he agreed to stump up 60% of the allegedly misappropriated bitcoins. The demand would rise by 5% for each month that he failed to agree. Bachiashvili would not fold to what he claims was extortion. Ivanshivili's lawyer confirmed the offer but responded: 'I believe that, with the parties coming to an agreement, and the plaintiff informing law enforcements of the absence of claims, the situation of Bachiashvili as a suspect in a crime could be much easier.' Bachiashvili claimed the trial was a foregone conclusion. 'I think it's one of the very few cases in the world where the claimant, the judge, the chief justices and the chief prosecutor all are sanctioned,' he said. Transparency International has described the case as being 'devoid of both legal and factual grounds'. Ivanshivili's lawyer said the NGO harboured 'clearly defined political sympathies and objectives'. Two weeks before the verdict, Bachiashvili decided to flee. Bachiashvili said: 'I got a message from one of the guys in the state security services that Ivanishvili has said that, 'I will crush him in jail and I will make him do what I want.'' Ivanshivili's lawyer described the claim as 'just yellow press-level [tabloid] gossiping'. The escape was well-planned. For months, Bachiashvili had been making regular visits to a border region called Kakheti, in order to convince the security services that were surveilling him that this was normal behaviour. On the evening of 2 March, he told his driver and security man that he wished to go to Kakheti but that he would need to be dropped off halfway there to meet a journalist alone and in secret. 'I jumped off from the car, so that the surveillance was a bit far, you know, behind a corner and I went through a building to a waiting car,' he said. He left his phone in a bag in the back of the car so that those tracking him would follow a false trail. Bachiashvili had been forced to surrender his Georgian and Russian passports. But the Russian document had lapsed and weeks earlier he had secretly applied for a renewal. It was this he used at the Armenian border crossing and then at the airport to get a 5am flight to Qatar. He had advised his parents and sister and her family to take a holiday out of the country at the time, and so they were safe. 'It's not easy, because you're basically leaving everything behind. You don't know whether you will be successful. [But] I knew that basically I was going to die in jail.' While in exile, he has been talking to various governments about his future, and it was during one of these discussions, he claimed, that he was advised of a death threat. 'They told me that it's not that they see a risk, but it's that they know that it's actually been ordered,' he said. He does not believe that Ivanishvili is behind it. He said: 'My fear is that it could be coming from secret services or some forces from some country that would want Ivanishvili to become more vulnerable. If they can hang a killing on him then there is [a] much lesser chance that he'll be able to have normal dialogue with the US or he will be more on a hook.' Bachiashvili, who intends to appeal against his conviction, believes Ivanishvili turned on him because he concluded that he could no longer be trusted to do his bidding, and that he may even be a western spy. 'Ivanishvili's grip on this power is existential for him,' he said. 'He is fighting for his life. He's like a machine only working in favour of his reptilian desires. And that desire is to stay alive.'
