TBILISI, September 29 – A court in Tbilisi has ruled that former Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili and a former top security official must repay nearly 9 million lari (about USD 3.3 million) to the state budget over the alleged misuse of public funds.
The decision, issued by Judge Aleksandre Gzirishvili of Tbilisi City Court, sided with a lawsuit brought by Georgia’s Ministry of Finance. The ministry argued that the state was entitled to recover money it said had been misappropriated while Saakashvili was in office.
Saakashvili, who served as Georgia’s president from 2004 to 2013, was convicted in absentia in 2018 under articles of the criminal code covering embezzlement of large sums through abuse of official position. He received an eight-year prison sentence. His former head of the Special State Protection Service, Teimuraz Janashia, was fined 300,000 lari.
The new civil ruling orders both men to reimburse the budget in full for the contested 9 million lari.
Saakashvili was elected president after co-leading the 2003 Rose Revolution and served until 2013. His UNM party lost power the year before on a wave of popular discontent against his regime, due to authoritarianism, top-level corruption, prison torture and effectively one-party rule. After returning from exile in 2021, he was swiftly imprisoned and began serving his sentences in absentia, and is currently incarcerated at a private clinic in the north of the capital. Saakshvili himself, and his supporters, have consistently argued that the cases against him are politically motivated.
