Five years jail for Merabishvili and fine for Tchiaberashvili
Tweet 
Share
Two Georgian former high officials have been found guilty for their role in a fake employment program.
Former Prime Minister Vano Merabishvili and Zurab Tchiaberashvili, who at the time was Minister of Heath and former Governor of the Kakheti region, have been found guilty in the so called ‘employment’ case.
Today in Kutaisi City Court, Merabishvili was sentenced to five years imprisonment for indifferently using the authority, funneling more than 5 million GEL of public funds into United National Movement’s party’s election campaign and illegally appropriating a country cottage in Gonio, on the Black Sea coast of Georgia.
Once he is released, Merabishvili will not be allowed to fill a governmental post for 18 months.
Tchiaberashvili was fined 50 000 GEL ($29 000 USD) for his role in the offending and was released on bail.
Both men deny charges were politically motivated.
More than 100 of approximately 4,000 witnesses requested by the Prosecution have so far been questioned during the ongoing trial. The questioned witnesses were people who were formally hired and paid to register unemployed persons in the lead up to the October 2012 parliamentary elections, but were in fact used by the UNM party as activists for campaigning purposes, the prosecution claimed.
The state Prosecution and lawyers of the accused were dissatisfied by the court verdict and said they would appeal against the sentence.
Meanwhile, the former Prime Minister has also been accused of being involved in two other cases. The first related to Sandro Girgvliani’s murder case in 2006, where Prosecutors allege Merabishvili, who at the time was the Interior Minister, took part in a series of premeditated actions aimed at covering up evidence in an attempt to obstruct officials from establishing truth in the murder case.
In the second instance, Merabishvili has been charged with "exceeding official powers with aggravated circumstances”in connection to breaking up a protest rally in Tbilisi center on May 26, 2011.
Merabishvili would have been sentenced to eight years imprisonment if Parliament did not cancel an article in the Criminal Code in May 2013, which outlined withdrawing penalties of the crimes. The Criminal Code now reads that the more severe verdict will absorb the less severe one, as it was in Merabishvili’s case.
Nino Burjanadze, the Leader of Democratic Movement party and Ex-Speaker of Parliament has slammed the former government for using excessive force against protesters when she was questioned in court about the protest rally on May 26, 2011.
Georgia’s ex-Prime Minister Vano Merabishvili says people have misinterpreted his words "I need two dead bodies” in the video that leaked on the internet yesterday.
Georgia’s former Prime Minister and ex-Minister of Internal Affairs, Vano Merabishvili, has been found guilty of abuse of power and was sentenced to four and a half years imprisonment.
Former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili has been summoned to the Prosecutor's Office of Georgia to be questioned as a witness on a number of high-profile cases.
Members of UNM are criticizing Government for summoning ex- President Mikheil Saakashvili to the Chief Prosecutor's Office of Georgia to be questioned as a witness on a number of high-profile cases.
A former Ministry of Internal Affairs senior official has admitted he previously lied to the court and has given a new testimony relating to the torture and murder of Sandro Girgvliani in 2006.
Tbilisi City Court has delivered a guilty verdict against Georgia’s former Interior Minister Ivane (Vano) Merabishvili and other ex-officials in the prolonged Girgvliani murder case.
Georgia’s former Interior and Prime Minister Ivane (Vano) Merabishvili is scheduled to leave prison on February 20, 2020.
Georgian Prime Minister Giorgi Gakharia has responded to the release of former Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili and said that the “United National Movement [the party Merabishvili belonged to] is the past, we should think about the future.”