Georgian police raid homes of former officials including ex-prime minister

As prosecutors pursue those accused of trying to overthrow the government, police in Georgia have searched three former senior officials’ homes.

The prosecutor general claimed that law enforcement had searched the homes of former prime minister Grigol Liluashvili, former interior security chief, and former prosecutor general Otar Partskhaladze.

Bidzina Ivanishvili, a billionaire former prime minister and co-founder of the ruling Georgian Dream party, who is widely regarded as the de facto leader of the South Caucasus nation, has close ties with all of her allies.

Authorities in the Black Sea nation have been cracking down on the opposition for months, detaining prominent pro-EU figures, but have so far only targeted those who are close to the ruling party.

Since last October, when Georgian Dream won parliamentary elections that the opposition decried as stolen, the former Soviet republic on the border of Russia has experienced political crisis.

At a briefing in Tbilisi, Chief Prosecutor Giorgi Gvarakidze explained to reporters that security personnel and anticorruption investigators conducted the raids simultaneously at 22 locations.

He continued, “Many electronic devices, documents, and cash had been seized.” He claimed that the action was a part of a number of ongoing criminal investigations, but he made no mention of the alleged offences or the arrests that had taken place.

Since a massive rally two weeks ago, 62 people have been detained, according to authorities, who released an arrest report on Friday.

Partskhaladze, who has dual citizenship in Georgia and Russia, was last month fined by the United Kingdom for having ties to Moscow.

Garibashvili, who served as prime minister from 2021 to 2024, has largely contributed to Tbilisi’s anti-Western turn since the start of the full-scale conflict in Ukraine. He claimed that Russia’s invasion was caused by the transatlantic NATO alliance’s expansion in a speech delivered in Bratislava in May 2023.

Georgia, which had fought with Russia in a brief conflict in 2008, was one of the most pro-Western nations to emerge from the rubble of the Soviet Union and hoped to become an EU member.

Georgian Dream accused the EU ambassador of supporting a power-grabbing attempt in the lead-up to a municipal election this month. Tbilisi was charged with disinformation in Brussels.