Grigol Liluashvili, the former head of the State Security Service of Georgia (SSG), has been sentenced to 13 years in prison. He was found guilty on four counts of bribery:
- accepting $1 million from Turkish investor Çağatay Ülker in October 2022 through Romeo Mikautadze, then First Deputy Minister of Economy and Sustainable Development, for lobbying the construction of wind power plants;
- receiving 1.5 million GEL in February 2022 from Giorgi Khazhalia, founder of the company Express-Service 2008, in exchange for facilitating gasification tenders—also brokered by Romeo Mikautadze;
- providing protection to fraudulent “call centers” between 2021 and 2023, from which $1,365,000 was received with the assistance of his relative, Sandro Liluashvili;
- running a bribery-funded protection racket for Kakha Gvantseladze, former director of the Tbilisi City Hall Kindergarten Management Agency, who was receiving substantial kickbacks from kindergarten procurement contracts.
Grigol Liluashvili, who headed the SSG for more than five years, was arrested on December 23, 2025. Had the verdict not been delivered by September 23, his maximum nine-month pre-trial detention period would have expired, requiring the court to modify the preventive measure.
