(Adnkronos) – The Tbilisi city court has sentenced former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili to a total of nine years in prison, after finding him guilty of embezzlement, reports the opposition-linked TV Mtavari TV.
Saakashvili, among the leaders of the 2003 Rose Revolution, and at loggerheads with the now ruling Georgian Dream party, is already in prison serving a previous six-year sentence for illegally pardoning four police officers in 2008 and ordering the assault of opposition MP Valeri Gelashvili in 2005. The new sentence adds three years to the previous one, Mtavari Tv specifies.
During his second term as President, between 2009 and 2013, Saakashvili allegedly disposed of the equivalent of three million euros of public funds, according to the new sentence. He was arrested upon his return to Georgia in October 2021, after spending seven years abroad, including a period in Ukraine, initially alongside Petro Poroshenko.
