Parliament official on ex-President Saakashvili: stealing nine million from citizens means facing legal consequences

Rati Ionatamishvili, the Chair of the Georgian Parliament’s Human Rights and Civil Integration Committee, on Wednesday said the imprisoned former President Mikheil Saakashvili was a major criminal, against whom about a hundred sentences had been handed down by the European Court of Human Rights.

Ionatamishvili’s comments came after Tbilisi City Court on Wednesday sentenced Saakashvili to nine years in prison on charges of embezzling state funds.

“When you steal nine million from your citizens and spend that money on personal luxuries, no one should be surprised that there will be legal consequences and responsibility”, the Parliament official said.

“Saakashvili is a major criminal with 100 verdicts against him in the European Court of Human Rights. He has been convicted and charged in multiple cases, and rightfully so”, he continued.

He further emphasised that anyone attempting to justify him was an accomplice to elite corruption.

“The most unfortunate part is that a person who systematically committed some of the most brutal crimes is now so emboldened by external forces that he dares to comment even on cases of elite corruption. The public knows he is a repeat offender and criminal”, Ionatamishvili concluded.

The European Court of Human Rights last year ruled that authorities in Georgia acted properly in 2014 when bringing criminal charges for abuse of power and complicity in criminal battery against Saakashvili.

The ECHR stated that “the authorities’ honest desire was to bring the applicant to justice for his wrongdoing and that, in the absence of sufficient evidence to the contrary, the allegation of an ulterior motive is unsubstantiated”.

Saakashvili is currently serving a six-year sentence after being convicted in 2018 of ordering riot police to beat Georgian MP Valery Gelashvili in 2005, and for pardoning interior ministry staff convicted in the 2006 murder of bank employee Sandro Girgvliani.

The former President, who served from 2004 to 2013, was arrested when he returned to Georgia in October 2021 after spending seven years in self-imposed exile.