Businessman charged as accomplice of TBC Bank founders in money laundering case gets 500,000 GEL bail
The court has banned him from crossing the state border of Georgia without consent from the police. Photo: 1tv.ge.
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Georgian businessman Avtandil Tsereteli has been given bail at 500,000 GEL bail by Tbilisi City Court today.
The court has banned him from crossing the state border of Georgia without consent from the police.
Avtandil Tsereteli has been given 14 days to pay the bail but he says he cannot afford to pay it.
Georgian businessman Tsereteli was charged as an accomplice in a money laundering case concerning the founders of TBC Bank Badri Japaridze and Mamuka Khazaradze.
Badri Japaridze and Mamuka Khazaradze were charged with laundering $16,164,000 back in July.
They deny the charges against them.
The Georgian Chief Prosecutor’s Office initially started an investigation into money laundering involving TBC Bank in August 2018.
The agency said that its Financial Monitoring Service studied the financial assets of TBC Bank, its client companies, bank administrators and certain shareholders in May 2018, which revealed “signs of money laundering”.
The monitoring service then sent the materials to the National of Bank of Georgia and appealed to the Prosecutor’s Office to take further steps.
Mamuka Khazaradze and Badri Japaridze were given bail at 700,000 GEL.
To note, the TBC Bank founders paid the bail yesterday.
The Georgian Chief Prosecutor’s Office has released new details regarding the high profile money laundering case involving TBC Bank founders Mamuka Khazaradze and Badri Japaridze.
The Prosecutor's Office says that its Financial Monitoring Service launched a study of financial assets of TBC Bank, its client companies, bank administrators and particular shareholders in May 2018, which revealed that there were “signs of money laundering”.
Founder of the Georgian leading bank TBC Mamuka Khazaradze has announced his resignation from the bank’s supervisory council amid a row related to a money-laundering case involving him and another top banker at TBC, Badri Japaridze.
Head of the board of directors of Tbilisi Bank Mamuka Khazaradze and his deputy Badri Japaridze, who founded the bank 27 years ago, have left their posts at the bank after being charged with laundering $16.7 million yesterday.
The International Prosecution Advisory Panel of Georgia has provided “outside assessment” of evidence in high-profile TBC Bank case. The panel explained that the evidence presented to them by prosecution “demonstrates a scheme” by TBC Bank founders Mamuka Khazaradze and Badri Japaridze “to conceal the unlawful distribution of bank funds”.