According to the former head of the Co-Investment Fund, Giorgi Bachiashvili, he was threatened by the founder of the Georgian Dream, Bidzina Ivanishvili, while he was testifying in court.

According to the defendant, Ivanishvili told him that he was expected to face liability in the civil dispute.

As Bachiashvili notes, at the closed session where Ivanishvili was testifying, he did not answer any specific questions or avoided answering them.

“The main witness did not recall any details, therefore, he avoided answering questions related to the document or the factual circumstances.

Several threatening proposals were also made, including, I mean other civil law relations, which concern other structural parts of the fund, he directly threatened me that I would be held liable there as well. I am not afraid of this, this will be the third time when a civil matter is considered from a criminal perspective on Ivanishvili’s instructions,” Bachiashvili said.

The founder of the Georgian Dream, Bidzina Ivanishvili, is testifying in a closed session in his own case, where he is the victim and the accused is the head of the co-investment fund, Giorgi Bachiashvili.

The prosecutor's office filed a motion to close the session.

As Mikheil Sadradze noted, the argument for partially closing the session is the protection of commercial secrets. In addition, during the questioning, the conversation may touch on the relationship between the bank and the client.

The defense did not agree with this motion. As lawyer Levan Makharashvili explained, the request to close the session for the purpose of commercial secrets should not be justified in general phrases.

The accused Bachiashvili himself called on Judge Giorgi Gelashvili to make an objective decision.

The judge granted the prosecution's motion and closed the hearing.

For information, the charges brought against Giorgi Bachiashvili are related to an act committed in 2017. In particular, according to the prosecutor's office, Bachiashvili transferred only 536,900 USD to the investor in exchange for the full profit from the investment, and misappropriated the remaining 8,986 Bitcoins belonging to the investor, the value of which at the time of its misappropriation amounted to up to 43 million USD.

Giorgi Bachiashvili pleads not guilty to the charges.