The Prosecutor General's Office of Georgia has charged two foreign citizens with money laundering in a case involving transnational crime, the state body announced on Saturday.
As the investigation established, the Vietnamese citizen and his accomplice deposited funds of illegal origin into personal accounts, opened in Georgian banks and later invested the criminally obtained sums in expensive real estate.
From 2020 to 2021, they bought two residential apartments in the country’s capital city of Tbilisi, a plot of land in western Lanchkhuti municipality, as well as two apartments and three garages in the Black Sea city of Batumi.
Around ₾1 million ($375,299) was legalised by the foreign citizens, and by the court’s ruling, the real properties, owned by the accused, were seized. The crime is punishable by imprisonment from nine to 12 years.