By Lucy Papachristou
TBILISI, Sept 16 (Reuters) – A court in Georgia sentenced its former security service chief to 13 years in prison on Wednesday on corruption charges, part of a broader crackdown on one-time senior officials in the ruling Georgian Dream party, the Interpress news agency reported.
Grigol Liluashvili, a former member of parliament who went on to lead the powerful State Security Service from 2019 until 2025, was arrested last December following raids on his home and those of a two-time former prime minister and an ex-prosecutor general.
All three men had been close allies of Bidzina Ivanishvili, a billionaire former prime minister and founder of Georgian Dream, widely seen as the de facto leader of the South Caucasus country.
Home to 3.7 million people, Georgia was once the former Soviet Union’s most democratic and pro-Western successor state, but its ties with the West have soured since the start of the war in Ukraine over what the European Union casts as the country’s authoritarian turn.
The former prime minister targeted in last year’s raids, Irakli Garibashvili, pleaded guilty to charges of large-scale money laundering and received five years in prison in January.
A court in Tbilisi found Liluashvili guilty of multiple cases of taking bribes, as well as benefiting from scam call centres run from inside Georgia, receiving $1.3 million in total, according to the prosecutor general’s office.
He denied guilt, Interpress reported.
Georgian authorities are pursuing prosecutions against members of the government elite at the same time as they are cracking down on opposition figures and political parties. The government is seeking to ban the three main opposition parties outright.
Georgians have staged regular street demonstrations since a parliamentary election in October 2024 resulted in Georgian Dream clinching another term in office.
(Reporting by Lucy PapachristouEditing by Rod Nickel)
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