Transparency International Georgia (TI Georgia) has published a report listing properties owned by representatives of the ruling Georgian Dream party in EU countries. The list included land, properties, and businesses.
TI Georgia investigated the assets of 18 individuals — including current and former members of Georgian Dream, public officials, and businesspersons close to the party — across 10 EU countries.
The organisation emphasised that the list was based solely on publicly available sources and represented only a portion of ‘the assets and companies that party members actually own across Europe’.
At the top of the list was billionaire and Georgian Dream founder Bidzina Ivanishvili. TI Georgia referred to a network of around 20 foreign companies as the ‘Ivanishvili family’s business empire’, which, according to the organisation, allowed the family to control around 125 Georgian companies and extensive real estate.
The companies are registered in the UK, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and France.
Ivanishvili and his wife, Ekaterine Khvedelidze, are listed as owning nearly 2,000 square metres of land with a 300-square-metre residence on it in Paris, as well as another plot in the city totaling up to 111,000 square metres.
In August 2024, a report by the Organized Crime Reporting Project (OCCRP) alleged Khvedelidze possessed three undisclosed plots of land in Moscow, one bought as recently as last year. Georgian Dream issued two statements denying the claims.
According to the same report, Kakha Kaladze, ex-footballer and current Mayor of Tbilisi, purchased a seven-room apartment in Paris in 2022 for €3.5 million ($4 million).
‘All four of Kakha Kaladze’s children are likely EU citizens, as they were born in Italy and France’, the report stated.
Irakli Rukhadze, the owner of the pro-government TV Imedi, was also included in the list, with TI Georgia saying he holds a stake in Georgian businesses through several companies registered in the Netherlands.
Next on the list was Imedi’s former general director Nikoloz Laliashvili, who is now Georgia’s ambassador to Hungary and Montenegro. He owns 50% of a Netherlands-registered company, while his wife, a Slovak citizen, owns a business in the Czech Republic.
Alongside Laliashvili, the TI Georgia’s report covered five other Georgian diplomats. Among them was Georgia’s ambassador to India, Vakhtang Jaoshvili, whose wife and child are French citizens. Jaoshvili’s wife owns three properties in two French cities. Another diplomat, Nikoloz Nikolozishvili, the Foreign Ministry’s Ambassador-at-Large, has owned an apartment in Bratislava, Slovakia, since 2008. Georgia’s ambassador to Armenia, Giorgi Sharvashidze, has owned a flat in Budapest, Hungary, since 2006.
Levan Kobiashvili, a former Georgian Dream MP and the current president of the Georgian Football Federation, was also listed in the report. Together with his wife, Tamar Tsuleiskiri — who until recently headed the now-defunct NATO and EU Information Center in Georgia — Kobiashvili owns two properties in Berlin. The first was purchased in 2014 for nearly €1.7 million ($2 million), and the second in 2020 for nearly €1 million ($1.1 million).
Former Deputy Economy Minister Romeo Mikautadze, who was detained on corruption charges in June, also appeared in the report – he purchased an apartment in Madrid in 2024.
Several current Georgian Dream MPs are listed as well, including Anton Obolashvili, who has owned an apartment in Paris with his wife since 2014, purchased for nearly €1.2 million ($1.4 million).
TI Georgia wrote that while Georgia risks losing its visa-free access to the EU due to ‘Georgian Dream’s authoritarian policies’, the party’s current and former members and officials are themselves buying real estate, establishing companies, and obtaining EU citizenship for their children in Europe.
Since Georgia secured EU candidate status in 2023, relations between Tbilisi and Brussels have plummeted, spurred on by a variety of actions taken by the ruling Georgian Dream party that are widely seen as eroding the country’s democratic institutions.
This included the adoption of several pieces of repressive legislation, as well as the widespread violations documented during the October 2024 parliamentary elections.
Relations fell further still the following month after the Georgian government announced it was freezing its EU membership bid, violently dispersing protesters against the decision and passing a new barrage of restrictive laws.
The EU, along with the US and the UK, have imposed a number of sanctions and other punitive measures in response.
Another move that has been floated is the suspension of Georgia’s visa-free access to the EU, granted in 2017. Earlier this month, the European Commission warned Georgia about a possible suspension and offered eight recommendations to prevent it.
In response, officials from Georgian Dream repeatedly voiced criticism toward Brussels, equating the recommendations to blackmail.
On multiple occasions, leaders of the ruling party, including Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze, have attempted to downplay the significance of visa-free travel, reducing it to a mere technical matter.
Mikheil Gvadzabia
