Former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili was sentenced to 9 years in prison for embezzlement of public funds.
This was reported by the Georgian TV channel "Rustavi-2".
Saakashvili was accused of spending $3.2 million from the State Security Service funds for personal purposes between 2009 and 2012, including on clothes, his sonʼs education, car rentals, and cosmetic procedures. He himself calls the case political.
The court found the former head of the Special Protection Service, Teimuraz Janashi, guilty of abuse of power and fined him 300
Saakashvili is already serving a six-year sentence. He has been sentenced in two other cases — the pardon of the killers of banker Sandro Girgvliani and the beating of MP Valeri Gelashvili.
The new term of imprisonment will be calculated from the moment of Saakashviliʼs arrest — that is, from October 1, 2021. Thus, he will be able to be released only on October 1, 2030. At the same time, he appears in the case of the dispersal of an opposition rally on November 7, 2007 and illegal border crossing.
- Mikheil Saakashvili was the President of Georgia from 2004 to 2013. He renounced his Georgian citizenship in 2013 and became a citizen of Ukraine. In 2021, he returned to Georgia, where he was arrested, because by that time Saakashvili had been convicted in absentia. The ex-president is currently in prison. In July 2023, the Verkhovna Rada asked the President of Georgia Salome Zurabishvili to pardon Mikheil Saakashvili.
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