Court of Appeals upholds fraud verdict against founders of TBC Bank, Lelo party
Mamuka Khazaradze (l) and Badri Japaridze were charged with laundering $16.7 million in 2019. Photo: RFE/RL
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The Tbilisi Court of Appeals on Thursday upheld last year’s verdict of the Tbilisi City Court against Mamuka Khazaradze and Badri Japaridze, the founders of TBC Bank and Lelo opposition party, confirming their fraud in a case dating back to 2008.
The ruling upheld the City Court’s decision that found the two guilty of group fraud with businessman Avtandil Tsereteli and sentenced them to seven years in prison. Japaridze and Khazaradze however avoided imprisonment through expiration of the statute of limitations by the time of the ruling.
Last year’s Court ruling itself followed a 2019 money laundering charge against the two, in which they were charged with laundering nearly $17 million in 2008.
The prosecution had argued TBC Bank had loaned the money to Tsereteli’s companies in the spring of 2008 and latter funnelled the sum back to Khazaradze and Japaridze, with the bank writing off the loan in 2012.
The 2022 ruling eventually replaced the laundering article with fraud, a move that was appealed both by the prosecution and the defence. The former requested the article on money laundering be reverted in the case, while the latter claimed the changing of the article by the Court had meant no crime had taken place.
Khazaradze, who in 2019 switched from banking activity to politics and founded the party in response to legal proceedings against him, said he would appeal the latest verdict in the Supreme Court.
In earlier comments, Khazaradze had accused Bidzina Ivanishvili, the founder of the ruling Georgian Dream party and the former Prime Minister, of orchestrating a “baseless case” against him with the objective of hampering his large-scale business projects.
Founders of TBC Bank and current leaders of the Lelo opposition party Mamuka Khazaradze and Badri Japaridze have been found guilty of fraud and sentenced to seven years in prison by Tbilisi City Court today, but due to the statute of limitations their prison time was waived.
Political party Lelo has nominated Mamuka Khazaradze, the co-founder of Georgia's TBC Bank, for the premiership earlier today in the country’s upcoming parliamentary elections to be held on October 31.
One of Georgia’s top bankers, Mamuka Khazaradze, who has recently been charged in a high-profile money laundering case, has officially launched a new civic movement in Georgia’s coastal town of Anaklia, located near the Russian-occupied region of Abkhazia.
The Georgian Chief Prosecutor’s Office have summoned TBC founders Mamuka Khazaradze and Badri Japaridze to charge them [later today] with laundering $16,754,000. The Prosecutor’s Office launched an investigation into possible money laundering on 2 August 2018, ‘after the Georgian Financial Monitoring Service sent us a written note about a possible violation’ taking place in 2007- 2008.
The Prosecutor General's Office of Georgia has charged three individuals and 13 legal entities with money laundering in a case involving transnational crime, the state body announced on Thursday.
Georgian Parliament Speaker Shalva Papuashvili and Defence Minister Irakli Chikovani on Thursday criticised what they described as a "radical agenda" of the Lelo opposition party, alleging the campaign aimed to target Bidzina Ivanishvili, the founder of the ruling Georgian Dream party who recently returned to domestic politics as the party’s Honorary Chair.