Police in Georgia have conducted searches at the homes of three former senior officials as authorities clamp down on figures accused of trying to overthrow the government.
In a statement on Friday, the prosecutor general said law enforcement had raided the homes of Irakli Garibashvili, a two-time former prime minister; Grigol Liluashvili, a former internal security chief; and Otar Partskhaladze, an ex-prosecutor general.
All have been close allies of Bidzina Ivanishvili, a billionaire former prime minister and founder of the ruling Georgian Dream party, widely seen as the de facto leader of the South Caucasus country.
Authorities in the Black Sea nation have for months waged a crackdown on the opposition, jailing prominent pro-EU figures, but had until now not targeted people close to the governing party.
The ex-Soviet republic bordering Russia has been mired in political crisis since last October, when Georgian Dream claimed victory in parliamentary elections that the opposition decried as stolen.
Anticorruption prosecutors and security agents carried out the raids simultaneously at 22 locations, Chief Prosecutor Giorgi Gvarakidze told reporters at a briefing in Tbilisi.
“A large amount of cash, documents, and various electronic devices had been seized,” he added. He said the move was part of several ongoing criminal investigations but did not disclose the nature of the alleged offences or whether any arrests had been made.
A total of 62 people have been arrested since a large rally two weeks ago, authorities said on Friday.
Partskhaladze, who is a dual Georgian-Russian citizen, was sanctioned by the United Kingdom last month for links to Moscow.
Garibashvili, who last served as prime minister from 2021 to 2024, largely spearheaded Tbilisi’s anti-Western turn since the outbreak of the full-scale war in Ukraine. In a speech in Bratislava in May 2023, he said that the enlargement of the transatlantic NATO alliance was to blame for Russia’s invasion.
Georgia, which fought a brief war with Russia in 2008, had previously been one of the most pro-Western countries to emerge from the ashes of the Soviet Union, with aspirations to join the EU.
In the lead-up to a municipal election this month, Georgian Dream accused the EU ambassador of expressing support for an attempt to seize power. Brussels accused Tbilisi of disinformation.
Georgian Dream has faced accusations of democratic backsliding, drifting towards Russia and derailing Georgia’s EU-membership bid enshrined in the country’s constitution – allegations the party rejects.
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