A Georgia court sentenced former president Mikhail Saakashvili to a new nine years in prison after he was found guilty of embezzlement.
The sentence, released Wednesday, extends the detention of a former Western leader who had already been sentenced to six years in prison. Opposition forces claim that the government, accused of mistreating democracy and pulling Georgia back to Russia, is scared of Sakashvili.
Judge Badri Kokramazashvili declared the controversial reformist Saqashvili, who was Georgia’s president from 2004 to 2012, and was found guilty of diverting nine million Georgian Laris ($3.2 million) with state funding from 2009 to 2012.
He has been accused of losing money in luxury hotels, cosmetic clinic visits, expensive clothing and more.
Temraz Janasia, the accused former Director of Special National Protection, was fined 300,000 Laris ($110,000), and the judge said there was no evidence that Janasia had spent the funds.
This sentence adds three years to Sakashvili’s incarceration. Following the overseas spell, he was jailed for six years in 2021 for abuse of power after returning to Georgia.
“So scary”
Georgian television showed scenes of fuss in court after the verdict was announced, with supporters of Saqashvili calling the judge a “slaves” of Georgia’s dream government.
“The administration is very afraid of Mikhail Saakashvili, like its main opposition. Petre Tsiskharishvili, executive director of United National Movement, which Sakashvili previously led, said:
The former president took him to social media to praise his work during his tenure and denounced the ruling to engineering authorities to prevent the adoption of political challenges.
“From the beginning, it was clear that the incident was purely political,” he wrote, accusing Bidina Ivanishvili, the founder and de facto leader of Georgia’s dreams of ordering his beliefs.
I was the president of Georgia from 2004 to 2012 and was the head of executive power. During this period, Georgia’s economy grew four times, the state’s budget increased 11 times, and pensions increased ten times. According to the World Bank, Georgia was the world’s number one economic reformer.
Georgia is…– Mikheil Sakashvili (@saakashvilim) March 12, 2025
A deep, polarizing figure, Sakashvili empowered the popular tide of admiration in the 2003 Rose Revolution.
In office, he embarked on an ambitious public sector reform program that redirected Georgia westwards and brought about 3.7 million rapid improvements in the South Caucasus country.
However, the second half of his tenure was marked by police brutality and the tragic 2008 war with Russia.
In 2012, UNM lost the election of Georgian Dream in Ivanishvili and has been in power ever since.
After taking office, Saqashvili moved to Ukraine where he briefly served as governor of southern Odesa.
He was charged by the Tbilisi Court in 2018 in a six-year prison by the Tbilisi Court and was arrested three years later when he arrived in Georgia.
Meanwhile, George Andream has strengthened his grip on power, leaving him with major protests and opposition in recent years.
The party’s latest election victory It was undermined in October 2024 by further accusations of abuse, particularly in relation to the impact operations from Russia. The European Parliament rejected the outcome.
The protest continues. Thousands of people demonstrated at the end of last year as the government halted negotiations with the European Union.
“I urge the international community to raise a voice for all the injustice that is taking place in Georgia, including multiple instances of political incarceration, peaceful assembly and opposition media crackdown.”
