Explainer | The five cases against former President Mikheil Saakashvili

Saakashvili, one of the leaders of the 2003 Rose Revolution that overthrew then-president Eduard Shevardnadze, following rigged parliamentary elections, was then elected president in 2004 with an overwhelming majority of the popular vote. He remained in office throughout a tumultuous period of Georgian history — including the August 2008 War with Russia — until 2013.

Supporters of Saakashvili have often highlighted the reforms carried out during his presidency — especially in its early years — including anti-corruption initiatives, the transformation of a largely dysfunctional bureaucratic system and the modernisation of the country’s infrastructure, as well as deepening relations with the West.

However, critics have pointed to Saakashvili’s increasingly authoritarian tendencies during his rule, police violence, pressure on the business sector and the media, as well as state influence over the judiciary.

In the 2012 elections, Saakashvili and his United National Movement (UNM) party were defeated by the Georgian Dream coalition, ending the party’s nine-year rule. The following year, Saakashvili’s presidential term also came to an end.

Shortly after Georgian Dream came to power and his presidential term ended, Saakashvili left Georgia. He spent several years in Ukraine, where he obtained citizenship and held various political positions, though his career there was also tumultuous.

In 2015, he was appointed as Governor of Odesa Oblast by then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. The following year, Saakashvili publicly accused Poroshenko of corruption and resigned. In 2017, while living in the US, Saakashvili was stripped of his Ukrainian citizenship, leaving him stateless.

His citizenship was reinstated under the current president, Volodymyr Zelenskyi, who appointed Saakashvili head of the Executive Reforms Committee in 2020.

At the same time, Saakashvili remained actively involved in Georgian politics and frequently announced his intention to return to the country, which he ultimately did days before the local elections in October 2021.

Shortly after his arrival, he was arrested and brought before the court on various charges, some of which had already resulted in verdicts against the former president in absentia.

In total, five cases were opened against Saakashvili since his presidency ended in 2013. He has considered all of them to be politically motivated.

The Sandro Girgvliani case

Four out of the five charges against Saakashvili were brought in 2014, two years after Georgian Dream came to power. Four years later, in January 2018, the first verdict was issued against him, related to the Sandro Girgvliani case.

Girgvliani was tortured and killed in January 2006 by employees of the Interior Ministry following an alleged argument in a bar with then-Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili’s wife, Tako Salakaia.

Few weeks later, a report by then opposition-leaning TV Imedi on the murder sparked a widespread campaign for justice for Girgvliani, led by his grieving mother, Irina Enukidze, who passed away the following year.

In this case, four employees of the Interior Ministry were prosecuted, but then-President Saakashvili pardoned them, reducing their sentences. In 2009, all four were released with parole.

In April 2011, months before the Georgian Dream coalition swept Saakashvili’s UNM from power, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) arrived at a damning ruling implicating Saakashvili in ‘preventing justice from being done in this gruesome homicide case’.

In January 2018, the Tbilisi City Court found Saakashvili guilty of obstructing justice and of offering Girgvliani’s murderers a presidential pardon, sentencing him to three years in prison.

Later, while in prison, Saakashvili stated in an interview that he regretted not dismissing Merabishvili at the time.

Many critics of Georgian Dream have cited the Girgvliani case as an example of double standards under the current government, pointing out that while the ruling party punished some officials from the previous administration, it continued working with prosecutors and judges from the same judicial system.

Notably, Levan Murusidze, one of the judges involved in the Girgvliani case during Saakashvili’s presidency, was later appointed to a lifetime position under Georgian Dream’s rule. He is now seen as a key figure in a powerful group of judges widely regarded as being closely aligned with the current government.

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The Valeri Gelashvili case

Months after the Girgvliani case, Tbilisi City Court delivered a verdict – six years in prison – on another charge against the former president, this time in the Valeri Gelashvili case.

Gelashvili, an MP from the opposition Industry Will Save Georgia party, was attacked in Tbilisi on 14 July 2005, resulting in serious injuries to his face.

The prosecution successfully argued that a conflict between Gelashvili and Saakashvili over the former’s house, culminating in Gelashvili making comments to the press about the then-president’s personal life, led Saakashvili to seek vengeance.

The prosecution claimed that Saakashvili ordered then-Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili and Erekle Kodua, the head of the now-dissolved Special Operations Department within the same ministry, to assault Gelashvili.

Speaking to Rustavi 2 in 2018, Saakashvili called the court ruling ‘a clown show’ that had nothing to do with the law. The former president connected his conviction to Georgian Dream founder Bidzina Ivanishvili’s wish not to see him in Georgia.

Merabishvili was sentenced to six years and nine months for the same crime in September 2016, while Kodua was sentenced to nine years in prison the same year.

The embezzlement case

This is the case in which now-imprisoned Saakashvili received a verdict last week, whereby he was sentenced to nine years in prison.

The prosecution accused Saakashvili and Temur Janashia, the head of the Special State Protection Service during his administration, of ‘group embezzlement’ of budget funds. Specifically, the investigation claimed that over ₾9 million ($3.2 million) was misappropriated from the state budget between 2009 and 2013 for Saakashvili’s ‘personal comfort and luxury’.

According to the prosecution, in order to conceal the misappropriated funds, Saakashvili created a ‘corrupt scheme’ and instructed the Special State Protection Service to cover expenses that could not be legally financed by the Georgian President’s Administration and the State Provision Agency.

At Wednesday’s hearing, the judge considered the ‘group involvement’ charge as an excessive accusation and dismissed it from the case. As a result, Janashia was not convicted under this article; however, the judge fined him ₾300,000 ($110,000) for abuse of power, stating that he placed the president above the public interest.

Saakashvili himself referred to the decision as an ‘oligarch’s verdict’, referring to Ivanishvili, and stated that it was the current government’s response to the ‘successful state-building’ during his presidency.

According to Georgian legislation, the newly announced nine-year sentence has been absorbed by the previous six-year term. As a result, Saakashvili’s prison time was extended by three more years, prolonging his incarceration until 2030.

The 7 November case

This was the first case in which Saakashvili was charged under Georgian Dream rule in late July 2014, and it is still ongoing in court.

The case can be broken down into several episodes.

The first episode concerns the violent suppression of the first major anti-government protests against Saakashvili’s rule in November 2007 by riot police. The 7 November operation involved the use of tear gas, water cannons, rubber bullets, and batons.

According to the prosecution, law enforcement officers illegally used rubber bullets that day and ‘brutally beat hundreds of citizens’, including journalists.

Prosecutors stated that Saakashvili, as the country’s commander-in-chief, deployed the armed forces of the Ministry of Defence in the centre of Tbilisi ‘without any legal basis’.

In addition to the crackdown on protests, the case includes the raid on the then opposition-aligned TV Imedi, owned by Georgian tycoon and one of the opposition leaders that time Badri Patarkatsishvili. Police stormed the station’s headquarters on the same day as the brutal crackdown on protests, destroying equipment and preventing the channel from resuming broadcasts for weeks.

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The violence, according to Saakashvili, was a response to extraordinary circumstances — an alleged Russian–backed coup led by Patarkatsishvili. However, Saakashvili has consistently denied personally calling the shots that day.

Another part of the case involves the seizure of property, including TV Imedi, from the Patarkatsishvili family. Prosecutors alleged that this was carried out through pressure and intimidation orchestrated by Saakashvili and his government against the family following the events of 7 November.

Based on these events, Saakashvili has been charged under the article on abuse of official authority in the criminal code, carrying a sentence up to eight years in prison.

The illegal border crossing case

The illegal border crossing case was opened much later than the others, in 2021, following Saakashvili’s dramatic return to Georgia and his subsequent arrest a few days later.

Before his arrest, Saakashvili had informed the public about his return to the country through social media posts on the day of the local elections.

Leaders of the Georgian Dream party insisted throughout that day that Saakashvili was lying and had not left Ukraine. However, by the end of the day, when then-Prime Minister Irakli Gharibashvili announced the ex-president’s arrest, members of the ruling party were forced to retract their claims.

According to the investigation, the former president illegally returned to Georgia from Ukraine in late September aboard a truck carrying dairy products. Four other individuals are also charged in the same case, accused of covering up the crime.

The case is still pending in court, though a verdict is expected to be announced soon.

Since his arrest in October 2021, Saakashvili has several times gone on hunger strike leading to his transfer to a hospital in Tbilisi, where he remains.

Other possible and pending cases

In addition to Saakashvili, several other former government officials were also imprisoned during the Georgian Dream’s rule, including former ministers of internal affairs and defence, as well as the former mayor of Tbilisi.

However, the ruling party seeks more.

In February this year, Georgian Dream established a parliamentary commission to punish UNM.

Officially called an ‘Interim Fact-Finding Commission on the Activities of the Regime and the Officials of the Political Regime of 2003–2012’, the ruling party said that the investigative commission will be established for a period of three months, but its term may be extended to half a year.

Throughout 2024, Georgian Dream repeatedly vowed to punish the former ruling party, notably accusing it of provoking and starting the August 2008 War.

Georgian Dream parliamentary leader Mamuka Mdinaradze stated that once parliament approves the conclusion of an investigation into the UNM’s activities during its time of rule, the results will be forwarded to the Prosecutor’s Office and ‘other relevant bodies [...] for the purpose of taking further measures and ensuring the punishment of the perpetrators’.

UNM called the commission a ‘circus performance’ and said that Ivanishvili is trying to ‘cover up his crimes’.

It remains unclear what the commission will actually do and who exactly will be targeted.

However, Saakashvili, as likely the most hated figure for the ruling party and the strongman of the previous government, is unlikely to be excluded from the process.

Tbilisi Court sentences Saakashvili to 9 years in prison

Two other cases against Saakashvili are still under trial.

OC MediaMikheil Gvadzabia