Sanctioning of Ivanishvili’s entourage may be related to Saakashvili – European Research Center director

Kakha Gogolashvili, the director of the European Research Center, on Friday told Front News that the recent sanctioning of the relatives of the founder of the ruling Georgian Dream party, Bidzina Ivanishvili, could be related to the currently imprisoned formed president of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili. 

He said that the cause behind the sanctioning of Ivanishvili’s brother, aunt and two other relatives, was still unidentified. 

“If they [Ukarainians] wanted to impose sanctions on Ivanishvili, then they should have imposed them on him, but still there is no information, why the individuals had been sanctioned. It is difficult to say anything definitively before this information is published. It is possible that their companies participated in the transit of sanctioned products”, Gogolashvili said and added that if the United States accepted the list proposed by the Ukrainian authorities, then it would be”serious “. 

He said he did not rule out the sanctions could be related to the demands to release Saakashvili, who currently holds Ukrainian citizenship and held a public post in the country before being arrested in Tbilisi last October after eight years in self-imposed political exile.