Businessman charged as accomplice of TBC Bank founders in money laundering case gets 500,000 GEL bail

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”.

• TBC founders officially charged, co-founder Khazaradze says case linked with Anaklia Port

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.