Gotsiridze: Ivanishvili may deliberately ordered Gvaramia’s arrest to hamper Georgia’s EU integration

The founder of the ruling Georgian Dream (GD) party Bidzina Ivanishvili, who is dubbed as a “Russian oligarch and a real ruler of the country” by the opposition, may have deliberately ordered the imprisonment of Mtavari channel Nika Gvaramia to hamper Georgia’s EU integration process, the United National Movement (UNM) opposition party MP Roman Gotsiridze told Front News On Monday.

Gotsiridze suggested that sentencing Gvaramia to three years and six months in prison for abuse of power while chairing Rustavi 2 TV, was expected to create obstacles for Georgia’s European integration following the country’s bid for membership in March of this year. 

The MP believes that the international  community “will have a sharp reaction” to the imprisonment of the head of a media outlet and addressed the country’s President Salome Zourabichvili to pardon Gvaramia and “prevent problems for Georgia’s European integration in the way.” 

Gvaramia, former education and justice minister of Georgia under the UNM, who ran Rustavi 2 TV between 2012 and 2019, was accused of embezzling large amounts of property belonging to Rustavi 2, commercial bribery and forging official documents, legalizing illegal income by a group with a preliminary agreement and abuse of power back in 2020. 

The judge of Tbilisi City Court Kakhaber Damenia found Gvaramia guilty of only abuse of authority on Monday, saying that Gvaramia’s activities in Rustavi 2 in 2019, prior to the verdict of the European Court of Human Rights on the Rustavi 2 ownership dispute, financially affected the channel. 

The  European Court returned 100 percent of company shares to former owner Kibar Khalvashi in 2019 who claimed the UNM had illegally seized the property from him.