Georgian MP Identifies Expat Oligarch in Russia as Financier of Failed Coup

[Photo Credit: St Petersburg-based businessman Alexander Ebralidze. Photo courtesy of Itar-Tass.]

An influential member of the Parliament of Georgia and the chairman of its Committee on Defense and Security, Givi Targamadze made a number of revelatory remarks during the weekly program Position on the Rustavi 2 television channel late on May 22. Targamadze claimed that the failed mutiny at the Mukhrovani military base on May 5 was sponsored by Alexander Ebralidze, an oligarch of Georgian descent, who has been living in Russia for the past three decades and who is also known to have personal ties to the Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. In particular, Targamadze noted:

"I have been refraining from naming a person who has organized everything, unless this person himself announced that after this failed mutiny he could no longer wait and would run for the presidency in the next elections – this is Mr. Ebralidze; and if there is someone who may think that in today’s Russia it is possible to be a billionaire oligarch in St. Petersburg uncontrolled by the most famous St. Petersburgian, i.e. [Russia’s PM Vladimir] Putin, is very wrong."

Originally from Batumi and currently based in St Petersburg, Ebralidze, who does not even possess Georgian citizenship, is the General Director of the Open Joint Stock Company Talion. In 2007, the Georgian Times estimated his fortune at $300 million. It appears that Ebralidze is extremely well connected. According to Gazeta.ru, Putin's former judo coach and presently General Director of the judo sports club Yavara-Neva, Arkadiy Rotenberg is on the Board of Directors of the Talion. In addition, among Ebralidze's friends are the Speaker of the Federation Council (the upper chamber of Russia's legislature - the Federal Assembly) Sergei Mironov, St Petersburg Governor Valentina Matvienko and Vice Governor Sergei Tarasov. Ebralidze's past criminal record is equally impressive. He has been convicted twice - first time for assault and illegal possession of weapons and second time for hooliganism and resisting authorities.

Alexander Ebralidze is the President of the World Congress of the Nations of Georgia, which was established in March in Vienna, Austria, according to the outfit's multilingual (English, Russian, Georgian and German) website and blog. The first founding convention of the World Congress of the Nations of Georgia attended by 1,500 delegates representing 14 nationalities from 18 countries was held in Sochi on May 13-15. The chief organizer of the convention was the Ossetian entrepreneur Gocha Dzasokhov, who was once close to the Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili but who broke ranks with him in the aftermath of the August war last year, according to Komsomolskaya Pravda. Apparently undeterred by the fact that he does not have a Georgian passport, at the conclusion of the convention Ebralidze made a sensational statement proclaiming that he was ready to run for the presidency in Georgia, which caused consternation and subsequent walk-out of a small delegation of opposition figures from Tbilisi. It should be noted that the delegation from Tbilisi, among others, included the former State Minister of Conflict Resolution Georgiy Volskiy, the famous Georgian film director Revaz Chkheidze (who was elected an honorary president of the World Congress of the Nations of Georgia) and Malkhaz Gulashvili, the president of the media holding Georgian Times and the Co-Chairman of the Public Commission for the Restoration of Russian-Georgian Relations.

The resolution adopted by the aforementioned founding convention basically represented the reiteration of the Kremlin's demands. It read, "Georgia must become a neutral, non-bloc-member country developing relations with its neighbors and all states of the world...No military threat for anyone should emanate from the territory of our motherland. Georgia should, in turn, receive international guarantees of non-interference in its internal affairs. Georgia's most important priority must be restoration and development of good-neighborly, equal relations with the Russian Federation."

In his interview on the Rustavi 2 Targamadze also made other important remarks regarding the pro-Russian members of the Georgian Diaspora in Russia. In particular, he alleged that the Mukhrovani mutiny organizers held several preparatory meetings in an unspecified Commonwealth of Independent States country. The prominent criminal authorities of Georgian descent, who are active in Russia - Tariel Oniani and Bondo Shalikiani - were purportedly the initiators of those meetings, according to Targamadze. It should be noted that on May 18, President Saakashvili identified Shalikiani as one of the "active sponsors" of the ongoing opposition demonstrations in Georgia, while in March, the Georgian Minister of Internal Affairs, Vano Merabishvili called Tariel Oniani as one of the active instigators of unrest.

Perhaps the best description of the main motivational factors that drive the Kremlin handlers of Ebralidze's project is provided by the Komsomolskaya Pravda correspondent Vladimir Vorsobin, who states:

"And in Moscow they probably understood: in order to restore Russia's influence, it will be necessary to deal with the Tbilisi political terrarium. While the disillusionment of Georgians with the U.S. policy is great and while the Tbilisi authorities are unstable, Moscow received a chance to win back from the U.S. at least a small platform for the pro-Russian politicians. In Sochi, for instance, there were already two 'agents of influence' - for the national majority and minority. Thus, however awkwardly and bluntly, the preparation of the political 'landing party,' it seems, have begun."

Georgian Coup Plotter Accused of Ties to Exiled State Security Minister

On May 11, Gaga Kirkitadze, the investigator for the Military Police of the Georgian Ministry of Defense announced the arrests of Majors Kakha Kobaidze and Davit Sulkhanishvili, the commanders of the 3rd and 1st infantry brigades of the Georgian armed forces respectively. Their arrest is connected to the mutiny of a tank brigade at the Mukhrovani military base on May 5. According to Kirkitadze, the two were well aware of the planned mutiny and they willfully concealed this information from the military command and law enforcement authorities. Consequently Kobaidze and Sulkhanishvili, who were immediately relieved of their military duties, face criminal charges in accordance with the Article 376 of the Criminal Code of Georgia (Failure to Report a Grave Crime), which provides punishment up to five years of imprisonment.

In a parallel development, the prominent Russian investigative journalist Yulia Latynina revealed more details about the Mukhrovani mutiny in the weekly radio program Kod Dostupa (Access Code) broadcast by the opposition radio station Ekho Moskvy on Saturday, May 9. In particular, Latynina points out that one of the principal organizers of the abortive coup attempt, Gia Gvaladze, the former commander of the Special Operations Brigade Delta, is a close friend and associate of the fugitive Georgian former State Security Minister Igor Giorgadze. Convicted by the Georgian authorities in absentia for organizing a failed assassination attempt on the then President of Georgia Eduard Shevardnadze in 1995 and wanted by Interpol, Giorgadze has been living in Moscow under the putative protection of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) ever since he fled Georgia in the aftermath of the aforementioned assassination attempt in 1995. In 2006, despite Tbilisi's numerous extradition requests and protests, Moscow granted Giorgadze political asylum.

From Moscow Giorgadze continued his involvement in the Georgian domestic political scene. The peak of his activities occurred in 2006 when he remotely administered the disparate group of marginal opposition parties and political movements, including the Justice Party, the Anti-Soros Movement and the Igor Giorgadze Foundation. The Justice Party was run on Giorgadze's behalf by his niece Maia Topuria. In September 2006 Topuria and twelve others were arrested for plotting to overthrow Saakashvili's government. Since then, in a display of his connections and financial prowess, Giorgadze spared no expense to hire high-profile American lawyers - Lawrence Barcella (with Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker LLP) and Melinda Sarafa - to represent Topuria in the Tbilisi City Court. However, it appears that their efforts were in vain, as Topuria was sentenced in August 2007 to eight and a half years in prison. As it turns out, the lawyers hired by Giorgadze submitted Topuria's case to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg sometime in late 2008. This lifted the self-imposed gag order on Giorgadze, who in a rare but extensive interview with the Russian magazine Profil in December 2008, boasted of having hired not only American lawyers but also "the lobbyist structures that work with the U.S. State Department."

Meanwhile, in the interview with the Ekho Moskvy on May 11, President Mikheil Saakashvili publicly disavowed ever making statements indicating the existence of the incontrovertible evidence suggesting the Russian connection to the Mukhrovani mutiny. At the same time President Saakashvili pointed out that the video recording of Gvaladze's discussion of coup details included reference to anticipated Russian military assistance. He further clarified that the coup plotters were mostly former military officials, who were in contact with other former military officials, who had long left Georgia and who were trying to destabilize the situation from abroad. In this regard it is worth recalling the conversation between President Saakashvili and the Minister of Internal Affairs Vano Merabishvili at the Mukhrovani base on the day of the mutiny in which the former alluded to the "Kitovani's gang" in connection with the thwarted revolt. Similar to Giorgadze, Tengiz Kitovani, a disgraced former Georgian National Guard Commander and Defense Minister, who is thought to be personally responsible for provoking the Georgian-Abkhaz war in the early 1990s, has been living in Moscow since the early 2000s.

The cast of possible FSB protégés interested in fomenting unrest in Georgia would be incomplete without the mention of General Roman Dumbadze, who, as we are recently reminded by the Jamestown analyst and leading Russian military and security expert Pavel Felgenhauer, was released from custody in exchange for 12 Georgian soldiers captured by the Russian troops in Poti one week after the ceasefire agreement in August of last year. It should be recalled here that General Dumbadze was in charge of the Georgian army brigade in Batumi, the capital of the autonomous region of Ajara, in 2004, when the strongman ruler of Ajara, Aslan Abashidze came into confrontation with President Saakashvili over the non-payment of taxes to the state budget and other issues that plagued relations between Tbilisi and Batumi. Fiercely loyal to Abashidze, Dumbadze participated in blowing up bridges connecting Ajara to Georgia proper in the final stages of that confrontation. After Tbilisi restored control over Batumi and Abashidze fled to Moscow, Dumbadze was caught and sentenced to 17 years in prison for treason in 2006.