The prosecutor demanded bail of one million lari from Irakli Garibashvili.

The former Georgian Prime Minister has been charged with money laundering. A search of Garibashvili's home revealed $6.5 million, the Prosecutor General stated, and requested that the former official be held on bail equivalent to $369,000.

As reported by "Caucasian Knot," on October 22, Irakli Garibashvili was questioned by the Anti-Corruption Agency of the State Security Service. According to security officials, he confessed to receiving illegal income for several years.

Former Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili has been charged, Prosecutor General Giorgi Gvarakidze announced. According to the prosecutor's office, the charge is money laundering on an especially large scale, Interpressnews reported today.

The Georgian prosecutor's office has requested bail of one million lari (approximately $369,000) as a preventive measure. Giorgi Gvarakidze noted that the former prime minister pleads guilty.

"He has fully admitted his guilt in relation to the charges. The prosecutor's office has petitioned the court to impose bail in the amount of 1 million lari, which can be secured by either cash or real estate. The prosecutor's office is also requesting additional obligations on the accused, such as surrendering his Georgian passport to law enforcement and a travel ban," Gvarakidze stated.

Garibashvili secretly engaged in various business activities and received illegal income.

According to him, $6.5 million was discovered and seized during a search of Irakli Garibashvili's apartment on October 17. "While in office, Irakli Garibashvili secretly engaged in various business activities and received particularly large amounts of illegal income. As an official, he was obliged to declare both his income and expenses. In order to legalize the aforementioned illegal income, he provided false information in his asset declarations, claiming that he annually received large sums of money as a gift from a family member. In this way, he artificially created the origin of part of the funds in an especially large amount, namely 830 thousand lari [approximately 306 thousand dollars], received by him from illegal participation in a private business, and introduced them into legal circulation," the prosecutor voiced the investigation's version.

Furthermore, the investigation believes that in 2023-2024, in order to legalize income, Garibashvili registered two expensive cars in the name of an associate and, through a family member, acquired 100% of the shares for 210 thousand lari. one of the companies that owns real estate.

US$6.5 million was discovered and seized during the search.

"At the same time, in order to disguise the true nature and origin of the unjustified funds, he converted them into foreign currency. The resulting US$6.5 million was discovered and seized during a search of his apartment on October 17, 2025," the agency quotes Gvarakidze as saying.

As a reminder, Irakli Garibashvili is one of the founders of the ruling Georgian Dream party. He served as prime minister from 2013 to 2015 and from 2021 to 2024. Since February 1, 2024, he has been the chairman of the Georgian Dream party. On April 25, 2025, Garibashvili announced that he was resigning as chairman of Georgian Dream and from politics in general.

Garibashvili's resignation as prime minister in 2024 could have been linked to rumors of his expensive acquisitions, inconsistent with his official income as head of government, political scientists interviewed by the "Caucasian Knot" indicated. The Georgian media has repeatedly raised the issue of the origins of Garibashvili and his family's valuable assets: in particular, his wife's collection of undeclared expensive watches, designer clothes, and jewelry, and the fact that his son was sent to study in the United States on a government plane.

On April 11, 2024, opposition members of parliament collected the required number of signatures to create a temporary investigative commission to examine the legal origins of Garibashvili's assets.