Georgian prosecutor’s office has opened a criminal case against the parents of financier Giorgi Bachiashvili. Giorgi was a former adviser to billionaire and founder of the ruling Georgian Dream party Bidzina Ivanishvili. Investigators allege that they participated in money laundering after Bachiashvili embezzled his boss’s bitcoins, Novosti-Gruzia reported.
Georgian media earlier reported that Bachiashvili tried to leave the country through Armenia.
“In 2017-2023, Giorgi Bachiashvili, with the help of his parents, laundered $2,944,957 and GEL 1,097,187 in illegal proceeds from assets obtained through criminal activity,” the statement said.
Bachiashvili’s mother and father have been charged in absentia under Article 25, Part 3, Subparagraph “c” of the Criminal Code of Georgia with complicity in laundering illegally obtained proceeds. This charge carries a sentence of 9 to 12 years in prison.
The prosecutor’s office has already filed a motion to detain the defendants. The financier’s parents are not in Georgia. Most likely, the next step will be to put them on the wanted list. Interpol may refuse to cooperate, considering the case politically motivated. That is exactly what happened with Bachiashvili.
The financier’s mother, Marina Ramazashvili, an ophthalmologist working in Russia, denies all charges. In a comment to TV Pirveli, she suggested that in this way the Georgian authorities are trying to put pressure on her son to provide access to his cryptocurrency portfolio.
Investigators claim that Bachiashvili embezzled 8,986.86 bitcoins (more than $1 billion at the current exchange rate) from Ivanishvili’s investments. In March 2025, a court sentenced him in absentia to 11 years in prison. In May, authorities announced that he had been detained at the Georgian border. The financier himself claims that he was kidnapped in the UAE and secretly transferred to Tbilisi on the billionaire’s orders.
Bachiashvili denies all charges and claims he is being politically persecuted for criticizing the Georgian Dream party, which he says is moving closer to Russia. Meanwhile, criminal cases continue to pile up: he faces up to 10 years in prison for failing to fulfill his official duties with Ivanishvili and illegally crossing the border.