Irakli Okruashvili

Irakli Okruashvili (2005)

Irakli Okruashvili ( Georgian ირაკლი ოქრუაშვილი ; born November 6, 1973 in Tskhinvali ) is a Georgian politician ( Movement for a United Georgia ). The lawyer was Minister of the Interior from June to December 2004, Minister of Defense from December 2004 to November 2006, and Minister of Economic Development of Georgia for six days in November 2006. On September 25, 2007 he founded the opposition party Movement for a United Georgia . From April 2008 to November 20, 2012 he lived in exile in France.

Life

job

In 1990 he finished high school in Tbilisi with the Abitur. In 1995 he graduated from Tbilisi State University with a state examination in law. He then worked first in the management of the Central Election Commission of Georgia, later as a consultant for the TACIS project State Service Committee of the European Union . From February 1996 to 1998 he was a lawyer in the law firm Kordsadze, Swandidze and Okruaschwili , from 1998 to 2000 in the law firm Okruaschwili & Partner in Tbilisi. From 1998 he lectured on international commercial law at the State University.

Okruashvili is a member of the World Legal Society and the International Legal Society .

Opposition politicians in the Shevardnadze era

In October 2000, Okruashvili became deputy to the then Minister of Justice Mikheil Saakashvili and his main advisor on legal issues. Together with him, he resigned from his post in October 2001 in protest against a lack of support in the fight against corruption. In June 2002 he was elected a member of the Tbilisi City Council on the list of the opposition party, United National Movement . Five months later, he became chairman of the city council's inspection committee.

In the parliamentary elections in November 2003, he won a direct mandate in Gori . After the Rose Revolution , President Saakashvili initially appointed him head of administration of the Gori, Kaspi , Chaschuri , Jawa and Tskhinvali Rayons . In January 2004 he was elected Attorney General of Georgia by Parliament. Okruashvili made a name for himself in prosecuting corrupt officials and in transferring their illegally acquired property to the state. He had the heads of the state railways, the sports association and the Postbank arrested shortly before they could go into hiding with large sums of money.

minister

On June 10, 2004, Okruashvili was elected Georgian Minister of the Interior by Parliament on the proposal of President Saakashvili. In the new office, he fired around 15,000 traffic police officers and reorganized the police patrols.

On December 15, 2004, he was appointed Minister of Defense. He promoted the development of the army according to NATO standards. In April 2005 it became known that Okruashvili was paying millions in military expenses from a semi-official army support fund , which was fed from funds paid to the prosecutor by corrupt administrative officials of the Shevardnadze era to avoid criminal proceedings. The fund was set up behind the back of parliament and was outside parliamentary control.

He was considered a hardliner towards Georgia's breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia . In May 2006 he announced that he would either celebrate the 2007 New Year in South Ossetia, which was reunited with Georgia, or step down as defense minister. On September 3, 2006, Okruashvili was shot down in a helicopter over South Ossetia after he had flown there with military equipment contrary to the ceasefire agreement of July 11, 2004. He was uninjured in the incident, as the pilot was able to make an emergency landing on Georgian territory.

According to a survey by the daily Kwiris palitra , in early November 2006, over 90 percent of Georgians regarded Okruashvili as the most influential politician in the country after President Saakashvili. In terms of sympathy ratings, it was significantly lower: in a follow-up survey on November 13, only 53% of citizens said they were the “most sympathetic politician” in Georgia.

On November 11, 2006, President Saakashvili Okruashvili replaced him as Minister of Defense and appointed him Minister of Economic Development. Six days later he announced his resignation from this position. Speaking to employees of the Ministry of Economic Affairs, he said he was attached to defense policy and could not come to terms with his replacement. Okruashvili later explained that there had been a rupture between himself and Saakashvili after the latter rejected his plan to recapture South Ossetia “with minimal losses”.

Opposition politician in the Saakashvili era

On September 25, 2007, Okruashvili founded the opposition party Movement for a United Georgia . At a press conference on the same day, he accused President Saakashvili of having appointed him Defense Minister in July 2005 to liquidate Georgian-Russian businessman Badri Patarkatsishvili . Saakashvili said he should try to get rid of him like former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri , who was killed in an attack on his convoy of vehicles . He also knew that Saakashvili had instructed Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili to have the opposition MP Valeri Gelashvili ( Republican Party ) beaten. When in 2004 as Minister of the Interior he arrested the entrepreneur Temur Alasania, an uncle of Saakashvili, for bribery (alleged amount of bribe: 200,000 US dollars), he had to release him on the orders of the President.

Okruashvili was arrested three days later. He has been charged with fraud , money laundering , negligence in the service and abuse of authority. He was released on October 9 after pleading guilty and bailing out ten million lari (about four million euros). The public prosecutor's office published an audio-visual interrogation in which Okruashvili retracted his allegations against Saakashvili, calling them a political maneuver. Over 2,000 people demonstrated in Tbilisi against the arrest. The arrest sparked mass protests in November 2007.

On December 15, 2007, the Movement for a United Georgia Party Congress elected him honorary chairman in absentia.

In exile

On November 1, he left the Caucasus Republic, according to his own statements, under duress, according to the Georgian General Prosecutor “for medical treatment” . On the same day he applied for political asylum in Germany . In a live broadcast from Munich on November 5, he renewed his allegations against President Saakashvili on the Georgian television station Imedi . On November 14, the Georgian arrest warrant against him was renewed. On November 27th, he was arrested in Berlin . An extradition request from the Georgian authorities was examined. On January 9, 2008, Okruashvili was handed over to France because he had entered Germany on a Schengen visa issued by France . He was released from police custody on January 31st. On April 23, France granted him political asylum.

Okruashvili was sentenced in absentia to an 11-year prison term for "extensive extortion " by the Tbilisi City Court . According to the judges, he is said to have forced the businessman Jemal Svanidze in October 2006 to transfer 2.6% of the shares in the mobile phone company Geocell to him. The then head of the State Communications Commission, Dimitri Kitoshvili, served him as an accomplice. With the verdict, the politician lost the right to vote in Georgia. On June 30, 2011, he was sentenced by the Tbilisi City Court in Absentia to a further two months in prison for allegedly forming an illegal armed group a few weeks earlier.

In October 2010 Okruashvili resigned from the chairmanship of the "Movement for a United Georgia" which he co-founded. In November 2010, together with other prominent politicians, including Sozar Subari , Levan Gatchechiladze and Erosi Kitsmarishvili, he founded a new opposition party, the "Georgian Party".

Return, arrest and release

After the change of government in Georgia and the announcement of an amnesty for political prisoners and exiles, Okruaschwilli decided to return to his homeland and seek rehabilitation. On his return from exile on November 20, 2012, he was arrested at the airport. According to his own statements, he returned to Georgia "in the hope of rehabilitation" after the change of government. Georgia's Justice Minister Tea Zulukiani held the former Minister of the Interior "subject to politically motivated persecution by the former government," but that does not mean that he is criminally innocent.

Okruashvili was allowed to leave the prison after almost eight weeks in prison. On January 10, 2013, the appeals court dropped all allegations of bribery and extortion against him. Witnesses to the alleged formation of an illegal armed group had also withdrawn their statements from 2011 as forced. The following day, the Tbilisi City Court released him on bail of 15,000 Georgian lari at the request of the public prosecutor . After his release, Okruashvili told Reuters that he hadn't had to make an agreement with the government. He was also not named by the authorities as a key witness against President Saakashvili, as was suspected in the press.

In August 2013, Okruashvili was temporarily arrested at Nice Airport after he was involved in a scuffle with Georgian politician Merab Samadashvili. According to a friend of Okruashvili's, he hit the politician in order to get revenge on his party, the Saakashvili party, United National Movement .

Private

He is married and has a daughter. In addition to Georgian, he speaks Russian and English. In June 2008 his uncle, Zurab Giguashvili, was kidnapped by four masked men who drove him to a suburb of Tbilisi, beat him to hospital and stole his laptop and mobile phone.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Märkische Allgemeine: A falcon on the run  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , November 30, 2007  
2. ^ Radio Free Europe: Ex-Minister Says Georgian President Ordered Killings , September 25, 2007
3. ↑ Civil Georgia: Okruashvili Ups Ante on Former Allies 26 September, 2007
4. ↑ Civil Georgia: Irakli Okruashvili's Speech at Presentation of his party 25 September, 2007.
5. ↑ Civil Georgia: Okruashvili May Be Freed on Bail after Pleading Guilty , October 8, 2007
6. ↑ Rustavi 2: Opposition holds large-scale rally  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , September 28, 2007  
7. ^ ^{A b} Civil Georgia: Don't Extradite Okruashvili - Party Tells Germany , November 30, 2007
8. ^ ^{A b} Civil Georgia: Germany Hands Okruashvili Over to France , January 9, 2008
9. ↑ Civil Georgia: Sidelined Okruashvili Back into Play , November 6, 2007
10. ↑ Georgia News: Court in Georgia orders Okruashvili to be detained , November 14, 2007
11. ↑ Der Spiegel: Opponents of President Saakashvili arrested in Berlin , November 28, 2007
12. ↑ Civil Georgia: Okruashvili Released, but under House Arrest , January 31st 2008
13. ^ Civil Georgia: France Grants Asylum to Okruashvili , April 23, 2008
14. ↑ Civil Georgia: Okruashvili Jailed for 11 Years in Absentia, Barred from Polls  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as broken. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , March 28, 2008.  
15. ↑ Georgian ex-minister arrested on return to Tbilisi . orf.at. Retrieved November 20, 2012.
16. ↑ Civil Georgia: Okruashvili Arrested After Return to Georgia , November 20, 2012 Design.
17. ^ Civil Georgia: Court Releases Ex-Defense Minister Okruashvili , Jan. 11, 2013
18. ^ Rustavi 2: Reuters interviews Irakli Okruashvili , January 16, 2013.
19. ^ Democracy & Freedom Watch: Okruashvili detained at Nice airport after scuffle , August 17, 2013.
20. ↑ Civil Georgia: Okruashvili's Uncle Attacked in Tbilisi 11 June, 2008
21. ^ Rustavi 2: Fugitive ex-minister's uncle assaulted , June 11, 2008

Web links

Commons : Irakli Okruashvili  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Civil Georgia : Opposition Makes Okruashvili Allegedly Smuggled Goods
• Wording of Okruashvili's allegations against President Saakashvili on September 25, 2007
• Portrait : Irakli Kobajewitsch Okruaschwili, Kavkaz-uzel, January 14, 2013 (Russian).