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The mother of a jailed former aide to Georgia’s de facto leader, Bidzina Ivanishvili has had her bank accounts frozen after she publicly accused Ivanishvili of pursuing a vendetta against her son.
The prosecutor’s office in Georgia acted against Marina Ramazashvili and her husband, Alexander, on the same day that the Guardian published an interview with her in which she criticised the billionaire and called for help from the west.
In the interview, she alleged that Ivanishvili, the honorary chair of the ruling Georgian Dream party, was treating her son, Giorgi Bachiashvili, as his “personal prisoner” and that he had “no humanity, he has no empathy”.
Ramazashvili, 65, a renowned ophthalmologist in Georgia, has treated Ivanishvili and members of his family for eye conditions in the past.
Bachiashvili, 40, is serving 11 years in jail for stealing $42m (£31m) in cryptocurrency from Ivanishvili in a case that the anti-corruption NGO Transparency International has described as being “devoid of both legal and factual grounds”.
Bachiashvili claims he is being punished by Ivanishvili, for whom he worked for a decade as his closest aide, for his outspoken criticism of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
He has further alleged that Ivanishvili, who has guided Georgia’s shift away from the west and towards Russia, may have concluded he was a western spy.
Bachiashvili fled Georgia in the middle of his trial over the alleged theft but in May he was taken from his place of hiding in Abu Dhabi by men who claimed they were from Interpol and flown with a bag over his head back to Tbilisi, the Georgian capital.
The Georgian government subsequently issued a press statement in which it claimed it had found and arrested Bachiashvili near Georgia’s border with Armenia and Azerbaijan.
In a statement published on Saturday after the freezing of the bank accounts, the prosecutor’s office said the move was part of an ongoing criminal investigation into money laundering.
It said: “The investigation has seized the bank accounts of the parents of convicted Giorgi Bachiashvili and the assets acquired by Giorgi Bachiashvili during and after the commission of the crime.
“During the trial, it was unequivocally proven that after misappropriating 8,986.86 bitcoins, Giorgi Bachiashvili, in order to cover up the illegal origin of the misappropriated assets, hid and disguised the true source of their origin through various financial transactions and actions, thereby allowing him to freely dispose of and use the illegally obtained assets.”
The US government has imposed sanctions on Ivanishvili for eroding democratic institutions, enabling human rights abuses and curbing the exercise of fundamental freedoms.
David Jandieri, a lawyer in Bachiashvili’s Georgian legal defence team, said the seizure of the parents’ assets illustrated the personal nature of the alleged persecution of their client.
He said: “Freezing the assets of Mr Bachiashvili’s parents – who have never been charged with any wrongdoing –demonstrates how the investigation is being weaponised. By extending punitive measures to his family, the authorities undermine fundamental principles of justice and impose a form of collective punishment.
“These people had their personal savings, accumulated through their honest medical work throughout their lives, arbitrarily seized. Such actions go far beyond legitimate law enforcement and constitute a politically motivated pressure rather than a fair legal process.”
Jandieri added: “It seems related to George’s and the family’s refusal to give up, including Ms Marina’s activities, such as her recent interview with the Guardian, in which she exposed multiple violations committed against George. She is a determined mother, her weapon is the truth, and she will not surrender. She remains unwavering in her pursuit of justice.”
The prosecutor’s office has been contacted for comment.
