A court in Georgia has handed ex-president Mikheil Saakashvili a new nine-year prison sentence after finding him guilty of embezzlement.
The ruling, announced on Wednesday, extends the detention of the pro-Western former leader, who was already serving a six-year sentence. Opposition forces claim it illustrates that the government, which is accused of abusing democracy and pulling Georgia back towards Russia, is scared of Saakashvili.
Judge Badri Kochlamazashvili declared Saakashvili, a controversial reformist who was Georgian president from 2004 to 2012, guilty of misappropriating nine million Georgian laris ($3.2m) in state funds from 2009 to 2012.
He is accused of misspending money on luxury hotels, visits to cosmetic clinics and expensive clothing, among other things.
Former Special State Protection Service head Teimuraz Janashia, also accused, was fined 300,000 laris ($110,000), with the judge saying there was no evidence that Janashia spent any of the funds.
The sentence adds three years to Saakashvili’s imprisonment. Following a spell abroad, he was jailed in 2021 for six years for abuse of power after he returned to Georgia.
‘Very afraid’
Georgian television showed scenes of commotion in the courtroom after the verdict was announced, with Saakashvili supporters calling the judge a “slave” of the Georgian Dream government.
“The regime is very afraid of Mikheil Saakashvili, as the main opposition figure. It does everything to ensure that Mikheil Saakashvili remains behind bars,” said Petre Tsiskarishvili, secretary-general of the United National Movement, which Saakashvili formerly led.
The former president took to social media to extoll his achievements during his time in office and accuse the authorities of engineering the verdict to keep him from mounting a political challenge.
“It was clear from the very beginning that the case was purely political,” he wrote, accusing Georgian Dream founder and de facto leader Bidzina Ivanishvili of ordering his conviction.
I was head of Executive power as president of Georgia for 8 years 2004-2012. In this Period Georgia’s economy grew 4 times, Our State Budget increased 11 times, Pensions were raised 10 times. Georgia was the World’s no 1 economic reformer, according to the World Bank.
Georgia had…— Mikheil Saakashvili (@SaakashviliM) March 12, 2025
A deeply polarising figure, Saakashvili rose to power on a tide of popular acclaim in the 2003 Rose Revolution.
In office, he reoriented Georgia towards the West and embarked on an ambitious public sector reform programme that delivered rapid improvements in the South Caucasus country of 3.7 million.
However, the latter part of his tenure was marked by police brutality and a disastrous 2008 war with Russia.
In 2012, the UNM lost elections to Ivanishvili’s Georgian Dream, which has remained in power since.
After leaving office, Saakashvili moved to Ukraine, where he briefly served as governor of the southern Odesa region.
He was charged, in absentia, by a Tbilisi court to six years in prison in 2018 and was arrested on arrival back in Georgia three years later.
Georgian Dream, meanwhile, has tightened its grip on power, brutally putting down large protests and opposition in recent years.
The party’s latest election victory in October 2024 was marred by further accusations of abuse, especially concerning influence operations from Russia. The European Parliament rejected the results.
Protests have continued. Thousands of people demonstrated late last year as the government suspended negotiations to join the European Union.
“I call on the international community to raise voice [sic] against all the injustices taking place in Georgia that includes multiple cases of political imprisonment and a crackdown on peaceful rallies and Opposition media,” Saakashvili said in his post on X.