Ex-aide to Georgia's most powerful man detained after fleeing fraud trial

By Felix Light

TBILISI (Reuters) -Georgian authorities said on Tuesday they had arrested an ex-aide to Georgia's most powerful man who fled the country earlier this year while on trial on charges of embezzling cryptocurrency worth more than $800 million from his former boss.

Giorgi Bachiashvili, who says the charges were politically motivated, was sentenced in absentia to 11 years in prison for defrauding Bidzina Ivanishvili, a billionaire former prime minister who is widely seen as Georgia's de facto leader.

Bachiashvili, who used to run Ivanishvili's investment fund, denies wrongdoing and has said the case aimed to punish him for breaking with Ivanishvili by publicly supporting Ukraine in its war with Russia.

Georgia's State Security Service, in a statement published on Facebook, said it had arrested Bachiashvili near the country's southern borders with Armenia and Azerbaijan after receiving an anonymous tip-off.

It said that Bachiashvili was under investigation for illegal border crossing. Authorities have said he fled Georgia in March by hiding inside a car before crossing into Armenia and then moving onto a third country.

Robert Amsterdam, one of Bachiashvili's lawyers, said in a statement published on his firm's website that Bachiashvili had been returned to Georgia "forcibly" and that he was at risk of torture.

The embezzlement charges related to a 2015 loan from Ivanishvili's Cartu Bank, which Bachiashvili had sought to establish a cryptocurrency mining business.

The Georgian branch of anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International has said that there is a lack of evidence against Bachiashvili, and that the case appears to reflect Ivanishvili's financial interests.

Ivanishvili, who is seen as controlling the ruling Georgian Dream party he founded, has steered traditionally pro-Western Georgia in a more pro-Russian direction since the outbreak of the Ukraine war, while clamping down on opposition at home.

In December, he was sanctioned by the United States over a crackdown on protesters opposed to the Georgian government's freezing of European Union accession talks until 2028.

The billionaire rarely appears in public, and has not commented on his former aide's flight or subsequent arrest.

(Reporting by Felix Light;Editing by Helen Popper)