When Georgia’s richest man first burst into politics 12 years ago, he vowed to “astonish Europe” with the democracy he would bring to the Black Sea nation.
But Bidzina Ivanishvili, the billionaire founder of Tbilisi’s ruling party, has done what many critics say is the opposite: led the country into international isolation while curbing the power of his political opponents.
This month, the European Parliament called for sanctions against the powerful tycoon, accusing him of “undermining democracy” with the aim of pulling Georgia away from the West towards Russia’s orbit.
As the Caucasus nation gears up for crunch parliamentary elections Saturday, all eyes will be on what the reclusive 68-year-old oligarch does if his Georgian Dream party, in power since 2012, wins again.
– ‘Absolute power’ –
Born into poverty in the village of Chorvila in western Georgia, Ivanishvili made his fortune in Russia during the cutthroat 1990s, amassing huge wealth as state-owned Soviet assets were privatised.
He is now worth $4.9 billion, according to Forbes magazine — just under a sixth of Georgia’s GDP — and holds dual Georgian and French citizenship.
In 2012, he became Georgia’s prime minister after founding his own political party, serving for just over a year before officially retiring from politics.
In 2023, he returned to become Georgian Dream’s honorary chairman, assuming the role of a kingmaker who nominates prime ministers from among his loyal lieutenants.
After initially pursuing a liberal pro-Western agenda, his party has over the last two years intensified its anti-Western and anti-liberal positions.
Under his de-facto rule, Georgian Dream has “managed to gradually capture all branches of power and independent institutions in the country,” the Georgian branch of the Transparency International rights group said in May.
“The arrangement allows Ivanishvili to have near absolute power without any formal accountability,” it added.
He maintains control by placing close associates, such as personal bodyguards, ex-CEOs of his companies, personal assistants and family doctors in charge of state institutions, “with law enforcement and security services being the key”, it said.
– Modern art, sharks, baobabs –
“He thinks of the country as his personal property, as a private corporation,” said political analyst Gia Khukhashvili, Ivanishvili’s former adviser and one-time close confidant.
The billionaire is “detached from reality” and surrounded by a small circle of “sycophantic favourites”, he added.
Giorgi Bachiashvili, the former head of Ivanishvili’s Co-Investment Fund who used to be the tycoon’s right-hand man, called him a “power-drunk criminal” who “is trading away the future of our country.”
Ivanishvili has also faced accusations of having ties with Russia, a charge his party has rejected.
In addition to property and land in Georgia worth hundreds of millions of dollars, Ivanishvili owns luxury real estate in New York and Paris through a complex web of offshore companies and trusts.
His Georgian Co-Investment Fund is registered in Luxembourg and operates 25 projects in Georgia, including shopping malls, cement factories, and luxury hotels.
He is also the founder of a charity fund that has failed to publish financial reports for the last four years and faced accusations of vote-buying.
Now sporting a splash of grey in his neatly coiffed hair, Ivanishvili lives in a lavish glass-and-steel mansion overlooking the capital Tbilisi, where he keeps a priceless collection of contemporary paintings.
Among his possessions is a private zoo with exotic animals, a huge aquarium with sharks and a collection of giant baobab trees transported from Africa by boat in a journey that cost millions of dollars.
– ‘Global war party’ –
In recent weeks, Ivanishvili has attracted ridicule on social media for appearing at campaign rallies inside a bulletproof glass booth and for canned applause being played at his speeches.
He says his party is seeking to win a supermajority in the new parliament to enable a constitutional ban on pro-Western opposition parties.
His campaign has focused on a conspiracy theory about a mysterious “global war party” that controls Western institutions and seeks to drag Georgia into the Russia-Ukraine war.
Opposition parties, he said, “are trying to seize power by opening a second front (against Russia) in Georgia” with the help of their foreign partners.
“On October 26, we must once again save the country and choose between slavery and freedom, submission to foreign powers and sovereignty, war and peace,” he told a campaign rally in the Black Sea city of Batumi.
In spring, Georgian Dream lawmakers passed a Russian-style “foreign influence” law that targeted civil society and sparked weeks of unprecedented street protests, prompting Brussels to halt Tbilisi’s European Union integration process.
Recent opinion polls suggest that four leading opposition alliances are poised to garner enough votes to form a coalition government in the upcoming ballot.
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