Ex-President of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili was sentenced in Georgia to nine years in prison in the so-called "jacket case", having found him guilty of embezzlement of budget funds on a large scale, reports "Echo of the Caucasus", writes UNN.
Details
The decision was announced by a judge of the Tbilisi City Court. The former head of the Special Security Service, Teimuraz Janashia, was found guilty of abuse of office and fined 300,000 lari.
Saakashvili and Janashia have repeatedly denied the charges, stating that the process is political in nature.
The prosecutor's office claimed that from May 1, 2009 to February 25, 2013, on the instructions and organization of Mikheil Saakashvili, 9 million lari (about 5.4 million dollars in those years) were spent from the state budget for his personal purposes in an inappropriate manner.
Currently, Saakashvili is already serving a six-year term. Sentences against him were previously handed down in two other cases - on the pardon of the murderers of Sandro Girgvliani and on the beating of MP Valeri Gelashvili.
The new term of imprisonment will be calculated from the moment of Mikheil Saakashvili's detention - October 1, 2021. Thus, according to the verdict, he will be able to be released only on October 1, 2030. At the same time, court proceedings are continuing against him in the cases of the events of November 7, 2007 and the illegal crossing of the border.
