By Lucy Papachristou
TBILISI, Jan 12 (Reuters) - Former Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili will serve a five-year prison sentence, prosecutors said on Monday, after he agreed to plea guilty to charges of large-scale money laundering.
Garibashvili, who served as prime minister from 2021 to 2024 and previously from 2013 to 2015, had been a longtime loyalist of Bidzina Ivanishvili, the billionaire ex-prime minister widely regarded as Georgia's de facto ruler.
His jailing marks the first time a senior figure from the governing elite has faced prosecution during a broader crackdown targeting opposition leaders.
Law enforcement raided Garibashvili's home - and those of two other associates of Ivanishvili - in October and said they had recovered $6.5 million in cash at the former business executive's residence.
Garibashvili, who has not publicly commented on the raid or the charges, was not available for comment on Monday. His lawyer told local media that he had been taken into custody.
Prosecutors said Garibashvili, 43, would also be fined 1 million lari ($375,230).
PROSECUTIONS TARGET FORMER OFFICIALS
The ruling Georgian Dream party has cracked down on its pro-Western opponents over the past year, jailing opposition figures and launching a process to ban the three largest opposition groups outright. Anti-government street protesters are regularly arrested and dozens remain in jail.
Georgian Dream, in power since 2012, has broadly defended law enforcement's response to the demonstrations and accuses the opposition of trying to stage violent coups d'etat. The parties reject those charges as politically motivated.
This clampdown has run concurrently with a slate of prosecutions targeting ex-officials and associates of Ivanishvili, who briefly served as premier from 2012 to 2013.
Alongside Garibashvili, former State Security Service chief Grigol Liluashvili faces up to 15 years in a bribery case.
Georgia was once the former Soviet Union's most democratic and pro-Western successor state, but its ties with the West have soured since the 2022 start of the war in Ukraine over what the European Union casts as the country's authoritarian turn.
Garibashvili, who spent his career before politics working for Ivanishvili's businesses, helped engineer Georgia's anti-Western pivot, declaring in a speech in Slovakia in 2023 that NATO expansion was to blame for Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
($1 = 2.6650 laris)
(Reporting by Lucy Papachristou; editing by Mark Heinrich)
