Former Georgian PM Gakharia under investigation over 2019 South Ossetia checkpoint
The Georgian authorities are investigating former prime minister and current opposition leader Giorgi Gakharia for installing a police checkpoint near South Ossetia in 2019.
According to a statement released by the Prosecutor's Office on Saturday, Gakharia’s actions are being investigated as part of a broader case involving charges of sabotage, attempted sabotage, and aiding and abetting hostile activities by the opposition generally. The investigation is likely the one initiated in February, following a request submitted by a pro-government group.
In April, representatives of Georgian Dream accused Gakharia, a former member of the party who went on to form the For Georgia opposition party, of unilaterally opening a new checkpoint in the village of Chorchana, near South Ossetian administrative boundary line during his tenure as interior minister in August 2019. The allegations were made by a parliamentary commission established by Georgian Dream to investigate the opposition.
They accused Gakharia of not having coordinated with other state agencies, including the Prime Minister’s Office and the State Security Service before opening the checkpoint — a move that Georgian Dream alleges created a risk of renewed escalations. Commission chair and Georgian Dream MP Tea Tsulukiani claimed that the State Security Service learned about the checkpoint ‘from the Ossetians via hotline’.
A few hours before the Prosecutor’s Office statement, former Interior Minister Vakhtang Gomelauri, who at the time headed the SSG, was summoned to testify against Gakharia before the commission.
Gomelauri, who has been sanctioned by the US and the UK for cracking down on protesters in 2024, stepped down as interior minister in late May.
Mikheil Gvadzabia
Speaking to journalists outside the Prosecutor’s Office, Gomelauri stated that he opposed the establishment of the checkpoint, fearing that it could provoke a war. He also said that at the time, his team communicated with Gakharia on the matter and ‘gave different advice’, but the decision to build the checkpoint was made personally by Gakharia without coordinating with then-Prime Minister Mamuka Bakhtadze.
Following the weekend’s developments, it emerged on Monday that the ruling party’s parliamentary commission had summoned Gakharia again for questioning regarding the checkpoint issue.
During his first questioning, Gakharia denied the allegations, stating that ‘everyone knew everything’ about the checkpoint and that the road leading to its construction was built by the Ministry of Infrastructure.
He also confirmed that the SSG held a different opinion on the matter, but ultimately, the position of the Ministry of Internal Affairs prevailed.
Gakharia stated that by opening the checkpoint, Georgia defended its territories, which resulted in the South Ossetian side not advancing the disputed boundary further. However, Tsulukiani countered this claim, saying that after the checkpoint was built, the boundary still advanced, and in response, the Ossetian side opened five new checkpoints.
After the Chorchana checkpoint was built, the South Ossetian side also restricted the free movement of ethnic Georgians living in Akhalgori (Leningor) for several years, preventing them from freely crossing into and out of Georgian central government-controlled territory.
Gakharia served as Interior Minister under Georgian Dream from 2017 to 2019 and as Prime Minister from 2019 to 2021.
While ruling party members had once staunchly defended Gakharia’s decisions, their rhetoric shifted dramatically after he left the party and founded an opposition party.
Explaining why they promoted him to Prime Minister if they disapproved of his tenure as Interior Minister, the ruling party once again alleged foreign interference, claiming Gakharia had powerful patrons.
The commission that has summoned Gakharia for a second time was created by Georgian Dream in February, and is officially tasked with investigating the former ruling United National Movement (UNM) party’s time in power from 2003–2012. Its creation followed repeated pledges by the ruling party to punish and outlaw the UNM for its ‘anti-state’ and ‘criminal’ activities.
However, the commission later expanded its mandate to cover the post-2012 period, targeting the entire opposition — including Gakharia’s party, which, along with other major parties, has been labelled by Georgian Dream as ‘UNM satellites’ or the ‘collective UNM’.
Georgian Dream has threatened to use the commission’s findings to petition the Constitutional Court for a ban on all those parties.
Unlike Gakharia, numerous other opposition politicians boycotted the commission despite being summoned. As a result, criminal investigations have been launched against them, which carries a penalty of a fine or up to one year in prison.
Some opposition figures have also refused to pay the bail set by the court as part of their protest against the commission, leading Georgian Dream to place four of them in pre-trial detention.
For ease of reading, we choose not to use qualifiers such as ‘de facto’, ‘unrecognised’, or ‘partially recognised’ when discussing institutions or political positions within Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh, and South Ossetia. This does not imply a position on their status.
Mariam Nikuradze
