Georgy Kalatozishvili, Tbilisi. Exclusively to Vestnik Kavkaza
As municipal elections approach (they are to take place on June 15th), the prosecution service is putting pressure on supporters of Mikheil Saakashvili, counting on reaching the former president himself. This is confirmed by a new accusation against one of the most powerful Georgian police officers in the past, the former head of the special executive department of the Interior Ministry, Yerekle Kodua.
Investigators found out that Kodua ordered the special force to beat up the MP and businessman Valery Gelashvili in 2005, after he insulted the President's wife Sandra Rulovs in an interview to the Rezonansi newspaper.
The victim told journalists that he wasn’t interested in those who executed the order, but in the initiator – Saakashvili. “Of course Kodua acted, according to the President’s order,” the businessman stated.
The former head of the Interior Ministry’s department left the country right after the parliamentary elections of 2012, as he knew that Valery Gelashvili, who was reelected to the parliament, wouldn’t leave him alone. At the moment Kodua is hiding in a country in Eastern Europe. If Tbilisi manages to achieve his extradition, there is a big chance that he would bear witness against the former president to avoid punishment.
Saakashvili, who lives in the USA, made a counter-step and publicly warned former Premier Bidzina Ivanishvili that a criminal prosecution against the former head of state could lead to negative consequences for him. “The Americans told the current Premier Irakly Garibashvili directly to tell his boss: in case of initiating a criminal case against me, they will launch sanctions against him – the West will freeze his accounts, he will be deprived of French citizenship and he won’t travel across Europe freely,” the former Georgian leader stated.
The current authorities deny these statements. “The name of the former president wasn’t mentioned at the meeting between Premier Garibashvili, President Obama and Vice-President Biden in Washington,” the deputy head of the Foreign Ministry, David Zalkaliani, said. However, the Washington Post confirmed that there was such a discussion behind closed doors.
Is seizure of Ivanishvili’s accounts realistic? In fact, he hasn’t stepped away from the pro-Western and pro-American course of the former administration. It seems that everything depends on future projects in Georgia by Washington.
