Former Prime Minister of Georgia Irakli Garibashvili has released a new open letter addressing the current Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze and Mamuka Mdinaradze, who recently announced his departure from politics.
Garibashvili is currently serving a 5-year prison sentence in a case involving the legalization of illicit income (money laundering). In late August, he was formally charged with receiving a bribe on an especially large scale. Under this article, he faces between 11 and 15 years of imprisonment.
Earlier, the former prime minister had already published several open statements launching fierce criticism against Kobakhidze and Mdinaradze.
“I believe the public has already become convinced that the letter I published is authentic, and that the facts cited in it correspond to reality. Mamuka Mdinaradze made such grave and egregious errors in this matter that it led not only to his dismissal from office, but also to his exit from politics. However, I want to convey my position to the public: Mdinaradze’s departure from politics cannot erase the severe and irreparable damage that, through his and Irakli Kobakhidze’s complicity, was inflicted on the country, the people, and the Georgian Dream party.”
In the new letter, Garibashvili recounted that on February 12, on the instructions of Kobakhidze and Mdinaradze, he was sent an article from the February 2 edition of the newspaper Asaval-Dasavali. In it, journalist Dito Chubinidze interviewed former human rights activist Lazare Jorbenadze. The article was primarily devoted to criticism of Kobakhidze and serious allegations leveled against him.
“I was delivered a grievance in which, based on a completely fabricated premise, suspicion was raised as to whether I was behind the aforementioned article. I am deliberately withholding other details, but the core grievance and accusation was precisely that they saw my hand behind such critical articles.
My reaction, of course, was intensely negative. I told them never to approach me with such questions and grievances again, that such hit pieces are not my style, but are rather characteristic of them. Subsequently, these critical allegations were voiced repeatedly on the airwaves of the Obieqtivi TV channel as well.”
According to Garibashvili, “this entire episode likely would never have needed to be recounted publicly had I not learned entirely by chance that the interviewee of the aforementioned article by Dito Chubinidze committed suicide some time after the article was published…
It also came to my attention that the newspaper Asaval-Dasavali itself openly raised questions regarding the suicide of the late human rights activist Lazare Jorbenadze and called into question the suicide narrative.”
The former prime minister considers it imperative to answer the question of what the true cause of Jorbenadze’s death was.
“I am raising this question publicly because the public still has unanswered questions regarding the suicides of a number of individuals that occurred during the Kobakhidze-Mdinaradze rule,” Irakli Garibashvili’s letter reads.