Bidzina Ivanishvili continues to abuse his unlawful influence over the justice system for personal purposes, seeking revenge against his former financial adviser, Giorgi Bachiashvili, who is currently serving an 11-year prison sentence for allegedly embezzling Ivanishvili’s funds and laundering money.

On September 29, 2025, the Prosecutor’s Office released a statement announcing that it had launched criminal proceedings against Giorgi Bachiashvili’s parents on charges of assisting in the legalization of illicit income. According to the Prosecutor’s Office, a resolution of indictment was issued against Bachiashvili’s parents under Article 25, Part 3, Subparagraph “g” of Article 194 of the Criminal Code of Georgia, which carries a sentence of 9 to 12 years in prison. The Prosecutor’s Office claims that between 2017 and 2023, Giorgi Bachiashvili laundered $2,944,957 and 1,097,187 GEL in illicit proceeds, allegedly with the help of his parents.

It is evident that initiating criminal prosecution against Bachiashvili’s parents aims to exert psychological pressure on their son. Ivanishvili’s objective is to recover, at any cost, the value of 8,253 Bitcoins, which, according to both Ivanishvili and now the court, Bachiashvili allegedly misappropriated from him.

The baselessness of the charges further confirms this goal. According to the lawyer representing Bachiashvili and his parents, the Prosecutor’s Office bases its accusation of aiding money laundering on the fact that Giorgi Bachiashvili had, years ago, purchased an apartment and two cars for his parents. Not only can receiving gifts from one’s own child not be considered aiding money laundering, but, as noted in another previous case, even Bachiashvili’s purchase or gifting of these items himself cannot be regarded as money laundering if it involved only the use of so-called illicit income, without concealing or disguising its nature, source, location, ownership, movement, or other essential attributes.

As previously reported, Bidzina Ivanishvili abused his unlawful influence over law enforcement and the justice system for personal purposes, ensuring that his former close financial adviser was convicted of an alleged act that, at best, could have been the subject of a civil dispute.

It should also be recalled that, in order to punish Bachiashvili, Ivanishvili arranged for him—who had fled Georgia—to be abducted abroad by Georgian security services, likely with the help of foreign intelligence agencies, and illegally brought back to Georgia, bypassing all lawful international legal mechanisms. Later, when it became clear that Bachiashvili would not return the allegedly misappropriated funds to Ivanishvili, he was brutally beaten in his prison cell. Although there is no direct evidence of this, suspicions remain that the assault was carried out on Ivanishvili’s orders.

The criminal prosecution of Bachiashvili’s parents is a continuation of a series of unlawful actions carried out on Ivanishvili’s instructions. State-led retribution against parents for their child’s alleged misconduct is the kind of phenomenon characteristic of Russia, Iran, and other authoritarian regimes, as well as of the Bolshevik regime of the 1920s–1930s.