The Court of Appeal upheld the verdict of the Tbilisi City Court, which sentenced the former CEO of the Co-Investment Fund Giorgi Bachiashvili to 11 years in prison. The charges are related to the illegal appropriation of cryptocurrency belonging to oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili.
Bachiashvili was sentenced to 10 years for embezzlement and 11 years for money laundering. Georgia has abolished the principle of adding up sentences, so a more severe punishment is applied - 11 years in prison.
The criminal case against Bachiashvili was opened in 2023. The investigation claims that in the summer of 2015, he and Ivanishvili invested in cryptocurrency mining: $1.3 million from Bachiashvili and $5 million from Ivanishvili. The profits were to be distributed proportionally to the investments. The prosecutor's office claims that in October 2017, Bachiashvili transferred only $537,000 to Ivanishvili, and appropriated the remaining bitcoins worth about $40 million and transferred them abroad.
In March 2025, Bachiashvili was accused of illegally crossing the state border and placed on the international wanted list under a red circular. The court replaced the preventive measure with detention.
In addition, Georgian citizen Shota Karumidze was detained, accused of aiding Bachiashvili in crossing the border. He is in prison.
Bachiashvili himself left Georgia, explaining his actions on social media by a threat to his life, which he learned about from a “reliable source.” According to a 2023 court ruling, he was prohibited from leaving the country.
According to the Georgian Ministry of Internal Affairs, on March 2, the businessman secretly crossed the border, using a car as a shelter. He presented a Russian passport and headed to a third country through Armenia.
Bachiashvili explained his successful escape across the border with Armenia by a corrupt system and mass protests that distracted the security forces. He said that he was safe and had dirt on Bidzina Ivanishvili.
At the end of May, it became known that the fugitive had been detained. On May 29, at a court hearing, he shared the details of his return to the country. According to Bachiashvili, he was kidnapped from abroad, "held blindfolded for two days, then loaded onto an Airzena plane and brought back to Georgia." The defendant's lawyers claimed that he could be tortured in his home country. In July, Bachiashvili said that he had been brutally beaten in prison. This information was confirmed to the Georgian service of Radio Liberty by the prisoner's lawyer, David Jandieri.
