The Tbilisi City Court sentenced former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili to 4.5 years in prison for illegally crossing the border in 2021. This sentence was already the fourth for Saakashvili, informs Georgian TV channel “TV Pirveli”.
The former president himself did not participate in the court session. The case concerns the crossing of the state border in the fall of 2021, when Saakashvili secretly returned to Georgia after an eight-year absence.
We will remind that on March 12, Saakashvili was also sentenced to 9 years in prison for embezzling 9 million GEL of budget funds.
“The case presents hundreds of thousands of lari in expenses for cosmetic services provided in leading clinics abroad: it is impossible to connect these expenses with the policy of non-recognition of the occupied territories. The case also presents documents confirming the payment of the education of the then president, which cost the budget 60,000 lari. These expenses cannot be considered expenses incurred in the interests of the country.”, – the judge noted then before announcing the sentence.
