Georgia’s Prosecutor General’s Office has launched criminal proceedings against the parents of imprisoned businessperson Giorgi Bachiashvili, alleging that they assisted in the money laundering scheme for which Bachiashvili was sentenced to 11 years in March.
Bachiashvili, a former ally and now critic of ruling Georgian Dream party founder Bidzina Ivanishvili, has denied the charges, instead linking his imprisonment to political persecution.
In a Monday statement, the Prosecutor General’s Office alleged that between 2015 and 2017 — the period for which Bachiashvili is under investigation for money laundering — Bachiashvili ‘involved his own parents’ in the process.
The statement referred, among other things, to alleged operations transferring funds and assets from abroad into Georgia, mixing them with other assets, as well as purchasing property and later reselling it, with the proceeds moved to Bachiashvili’s accounts.
According to the Prosecutor General’s Office, the operations were done with the help of Bachiashvili’s parents and with the aim of concealing the true origin of the assets.
‘As a result, between 2017 and 2023, Giorgi Bachiashvili, with the help of his parents, laundered illicit assets amounting to $2,944,957 and ₾1,097,187 ($400,000)’, the office said.
Previously, in mid-September, it was announced that Georgian authorities had frozen the bank accounts of Bachiashvili’s parents, alleging that their assets included property embezzled from Ivanishvili.
If convicted, Bachiashvili’s parents face up to 12 years in prison. However, according to the opposition-leaning TV Pirveli, Bachiashvili sent his parents to the US a few weeks before his detention.
What is Bachiashvili charged for?
Ivanishvili has accused Bachiashvili of illegally appropriating ₿8,253.13 — worth around $40 million at the time, according to the investigation — and money laundering. However, Bachiashvili denied the charges, claiming the case was politically motivated and linked to his fallout with Ivanishvili.
Bachiashvili served as the general director of the Georgian Co-Investment Fund — founded by Ivanishvili in 2013 shortly after coming to power — until 2019, when he moved to the position of chair of the fund’s advisory board.
Once close partners, their paths diverged in recent years, accompanied by investigations against Bachiashvili. Ivanishvili’s side has attributed the conflict to Bachiashvili’s dishonesty, while Bachiashvili has claimed that their partnership ended due to political and ideological disagreements.
The second case, launched in 2025, saw the authorities accuse Bachiashvili of failing to or improperly fulfilling his official duties as the former head of the Co-Investment Fund.
Citing the risk of retaliation, Bachiashvili secretly left the country in March 2025. However, by late May, he was arrested and imprisoned in order to serve out the sentence previously handed down by the court in the cryptocurrency case.
At the time, Georgia’s State Security Service (SSG) claimed that Bachiashvili was detained at the Georgian border, while he said he had been forcibly abducted from another country.
‘This is absurd and disgraceful’
Bachiashvili’s lawyer, Levan Makharashvili, told journalists that the investigation against Bachiashvili’s parents was largely based on property their son had purchased for them.
‘[Case materials] are quite voluminous — 19 volumes — but from what I’ve seen on the surface, the main accusation is that years ago Giorgi Bachiashvili bought his parents an apartment and two cars, if I’m not mistaken, and the investigation considers this to be money laundering’, he said.
‘Obviously, under current legislation this does not constitute a crime, and we will do everything necessary to prove that’, Makharashvili added.
Bachiashvili responded to the investigation against his parents during Tuesday’s court hearing on his illegal border crossing case.
‘In fact, yesterday once again confirmed that what’s happening against me is an act of retaliation’, he said, commenting on the Prosecutor General’s Office’s statement.
‘My 75-year-old father, a surgeon who has dedicated his entire life to caring for patients, and my 65-year-old mother, an ophthalmologist, have been branded as criminals. This is absurd and disgraceful — a smear against a person’s name’, he added, as quoted by RFE/RL.
Ultimately, the judge sentenced Bachiashvili to 4.5 years in prison for illegally crossing the border, though under the law, this term was absorbed into the longer 11-year sentence he was already serving.
Vazha Kharumidze, who, according to the investigation, assisted Bachiashvili in crossing the border, was also sentenced to 4.5 years.
In his final statement, Bachiashvili argued that his unlawful crossing had been driven by ‘extreme necessity’, which, as he said, was substantiated by the fact that he had been ‘tortured’ after being arrested.
He was referring to an incident in July, when, according to Bachiashvili, he was brutally beaten in his cell by an unidentified individual — something the Special Penitentiary Service has described instead as a confrontation between two inmates.
In addition to the resolved cases, Bachiashvili faces another case launched in 2025, in which authorities accused him of failing to properly perform his official duties as the former head of the Co-Investment Fund.
Mikheil Gvadzabia
