Old enemies in same cell: crime boss beaten, codes and politics. What is happening in Georgia’s prisons?
The beating of crime boss Peikrishvili in Georgia
A scandal has erupted at Gldani Prison No. 8 in Tbilisi. Davit Peikrishvili, a well-known crime boss, was taken to hospital twice in two days with multiple injuries.
According to his lawyer, on 16 October, prison authorities placed five inmates whom Peikrishvili considers his “underworld enemies” in his cell. They included Vato Kipiani and Avtandil Bilanishvili, known as Katsro. Authorities had arrested them the previous day over a fight at a restaurant.
The lawyer says the men beat Peikrishvili for several days and demanded the codes to his phone.
Background: Crime bosses Davit and Giorgi Peikrishvili were arrested on 22 September 2026 on charges of violence and extortion. Authorities arrested Kipiani and Bilanishvili on 15 October on charges of group violence. Georgian media often describe Bilanishvili as a friend of Bera Ivanishvili, the son of billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, who is widely regarded as the country’s power behind the scenes. The alleged links between those involved and Georgia’s elite have long attracted intense discussion in the media and on social networks. Their arrests have caused a major public stir.
In January 2020, law enforcement agencies in Georgia and Ukraine announced that they had foiled a plot to kill brothers Davit and Giorgi Peikrishvili. According to investigators, the perpetrators planned to use a remotely detonated explosive device. Vato Kipiani was charged in connection with the case.
Now, six years later, Peikrishvili’s lawyer says Kipiani and Davit Peikrishvili ended up in the same prison cell.
The Special Penitentiary Service, however, insists that nobody mistreated Peikrishvili. Kipiani’s lawyer says the two men were never held in the same cell.
The Ministry of Justice has launched an investigation into the case.
This is not the first such incident at Gldani Prison No. 8
Financier Giorgi Bachiashvili was beaten there in suspicious circumstances in 2025. Bachiashvili formerly served as executive director of an investment fund belonging to billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, the founder and honorary chairman of the ruling Georgian Dream party, whom many regard as the country’s “power behind the scenes”.
Bachiashvili said at the time that, before the beating, the prison governor had advised him to hand over his financial data to Bidzina Ivanishvili as quickly as possible. The State Security Service later claimed that Bachiashvili had staged the beating.
Opposition politicians are now linking the Peikrishvili case to cryptocurrency wallets, fraudulent call centres and the Ivanishvili family. Peikrishvili’s lawyer rules out a political motive.
A cell without cameras
The Peikrishvili brothers’ lawyer, Paata Gogiashvili, described the incident in an interview with Formula TV.
He said that after their arrest, both brothers had stayed in cells equipped with CCTV. Prison staff then moved them to different cells and placed Davit Peikrishvili alone in a cell that, according to the lawyer, had no camera.
At 20:00 on 16 October, five more inmates joined him in the cell: Vato Kipiani, Shota Kipiani, Avtandil Bilanishvili, Kacharava and Gotsiridze. Earlier that day, on Friday, Gogiashvili had visited his clients, the Peikrishvili brothers. The lawyer…
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On 17 October, journalist Keta Tsitskishvili wrote on Facebook, citing a source, that someone had beaten Peikrishvili in prison. The Penitentiary Service press office denied the report in an interview with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
On 19 October, Davit Peikrishvili called his mother and told her he was fine. However, she continued to insist that someone had beaten her son, although she admitted that she had not witnessed the incident herself and that his lawyer had not confirmed it to her.
That same day, lawyer Gogiashvili went to the prison.
He said he found Peikrishvili badly beaten. The prisoner had four broken ribs, fractures to his skull and facial bones, and bruises.
His mother says he had five broken ribs and a double jaw fracture. Based on Peikrishvili’s account, the lawyer alleges that all five cellmates took part in the beating.
According to the lawyer, the cellmates told Peikrishvili that he and his brother had landed them in prison. They demanded access to the brothers’ phones. The lawyer does not know what information the phones contained. He says investigators seized the brothers’ phones and laptops during a search.
The lawyer alleges that prison officials knew about the conflict between the inmates.
At 16:31 on 19 October, the Public Defender’s hotline received a report of alleged ill-treatment of Peikrishvili. According to the ombudsman’s office, its representative arrived at the prison that day, but Peikrishvili declined to meet them.
The lawyer gives a different account. He says prison officials showed the ombudsman’s representative a brightly lit cell, but Peikrishvili could not speak because two of his five cellmates were in the room with him.
That night, according to the lawyer, Giorgi Peikrishvili, who was held in another cell at the same prison, cut his wrists “to demand that authorities save his brother’s life”. At 21:00, staff took Davit Peikrishvili to Vivamedi clinic. The clinic’s medical director, Zurab Chkhaidze, said Peikrishvili had multiple injuries.
20 October: Broken glass during a meeting with his lawyer
A second incident occurred the following day, on 20 October, during a meeting with his lawyer.
According to the Penitentiary Service, Davit Peikrishvili suddenly left the meeting room, smashed a corridor window and threatened to hurt himself with the broken glass. The service also said he urged other inmates to disrupt prison operations and demanded a meeting with his brother. The law prohibits such meetings because the brothers face charges in the same case.
Gogiashvili confirms that Peikrishvili injured himself in his presence. Davit jumped up from his chair, smashed the glass with his hand and injured his arms. According to the lawyer, Peikrishvili had already sustained the injuries from the alleged beating in his cell before this incident.
Staff took Peikrishvili back to Vivamedi. Doctors said he had injuries to his upper limbs that he had not sustained the previous day and needed surgery. The clinic’s director said the injuries were not serious and that Peikrishvili’s condition was stable.
Prison authorities: “There was no violence”
In a statement on 20 October, the prison administration again denied the lawyer’s allegations.
The administration cited statements from the prisoner’s mother and his lawyer. “On 19 October, his mother said that her son had confirmed he was fine. The lawyer also denied that any beating had taken place when speaking to the mother,” the administration said. It described the events as a “provocation” and a “deliberate campaign to discredit the prison leadership”.
However, the statement did not explain how Peikrishvili sustained the multiple injuries that clinic staff recorded the day before his meeting with the lawyer.
On 20 October, the investigative department of the Ministry of Justice’s General Inspectorate launched an investigation into the alleged infliction of bodily harm on Peikrishvili. The department acted on information reported in the media and opened the case under the article on violence.
Lawyer Gogiashvili holds the prison leadership responsible. He has urged the prosecutor’s office to obtain CCTV footage from the prison corridor urgently, “before it is lost”.
Background: What are the people involved accused of?
On 22 September 2026, authorities arrested 40-year-old twin brothers Davit and Giorgi Peikrishvili in two separate cases.
Prosecutors accuse Giorgi of extorting a large sum of money from businessman Rati Gurgenishvili. They accuse Davit of group hooliganism in connection with an attack on a taxi driver on 2 October 2025.
On 2 October 2026, authorities also charged both brothers with laundering 10 million lari (about $4 million) between 2020 and 2026. The brothers deny the allegations.
In 2023, authorities arrested Davit Peikrishvili on suspicion of attacking a cryptocurrency exchange and carrying out a robbery worth more than 1 million lari (about $380,000).
Both brothers face up to 12 years in prison.
Old enemies in the same cell
On 30 January 2020, law enforcement agencies in Georgia announced that they had uncovered a plot to kill the Peikrishvili brothers. Authorities detained six people in Tbilisi and Batumi, while Ukraine’s security service arrested another suspect in Kharkiv.
According to investigators, the plot originated in Ukraine. On 25 June 2021, authorities detained 47-year-old Vakhtang (Vato) Kipiani at Tbilisi airport after Ukraine deported him. Kipiani has numerous previous convictions. Prosecutors charged him with preparing a premeditated murder under aggravating circumstances.
Avtandil Bilanishvili, known as “Katsro”, is the son of 75-year-old Kako Bilanishvili, a well-known crime boss. Katsro first attracted public attention in 2019, when investigators questioned him in connection with the death of 19-year-old footballer Giorgi Shakarashvili. The Interior Ministry later said that video footage did not show Bilanishvili.
Authorities arrested Kipiani, Bilanishvili and Shota Kipiani in Tbilisi on 14 October. They accuse the three men of beating a 65-year-old man at a restaurant in the Vake district. Group violence carries a prison sentence of up to two years. A court ordered all three to remain in pre-trial detention.
Kipiani’s lawyer, Marika Phaladze, told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that her client categorically denies sharing a cell with Peikrishvili or having any conflict with him. “Vato Kipiani’s position is that the investigation will establish all the facts, and everything will become clear,” Phaladze said.
“They let them in to take the money”: theories about the beating in the cell
The Peikrishvili brothers’ mother is convinced that authorities staged Kipiani and Bilanishvili’s arrests over the fight. She believes they did so to get the men into Davit Peikrishvili’s cell and show him that “thieves run everything in Georgia’s prisons”.
Lasha Parulava, a member of the opposition United National Movement, has put forward an even more elaborate theory.
He suggests that officials let Kipiani and Bilanishvili into the prison to seize money linked to call centres. According to Parulava, they wanted the codes Peikrishvili used for cryptocurrency transactions. Parulava believes that the entire incident may be linked to Bidzina Ivanishvili’s financial operations, but he has offered no evidence to support his theory.
Peikrishvili’s lawyer rejects this explanation. He rules out political motives and sees the incident as an old feud between two rival underworld groups.
Call centres have already come up in the Peikrishvili case. On 3 October, when prosecutors charged the brothers with money laundering, journalists asked the prosecutor handling their case, Mariam Berdzenishvili, whether the charges had any links to illegal call centres. She neither confirmed nor denied such a connection.
Fraudulent call centres have become one of the biggest crime stories in Georgia in recent years
In March 2025, OCCRP, Studio Monitor and more than 30 media partners published an investigation titled “The Scam Empire”.
According to the journalists, a Tbilisi call centre located just metres from the headquarters of Georgia’s State Security Service had defrauded more than 6,100 people worldwide out of $35.3m since May 2022.
In December 2025, authorities arrested Grigol Liluashvili, the former head of the State Security Service. Prosecutors accuse him, among other things, of taking bribes to protect call centres operating in the country.
In July 2026, his relative, Andria Liluashvili, received a 12-year prison sentence for transferring bribes from call centres and laundering money.
According to an investigation by Georgia’s Studio Monitor, the network exposed in 2025 may still be operating from a new location.
The Bachiashvili case: the same prison, a similar incident and two conflicting accounts
In July 2025, Giorgi Bachiashvili, the former head of a co-investment fund he established with Bidzina Ivanishvili, suffered a brutal beating at Gldani Prison No. 8. He was serving an 11-year sentence for allegedly embezzling about $39m in cryptocurrency belonging to Ivanishvili.
Bachiashvili said that three days before the beating, on 8 July, prison governor David Gogoberishvili had summoned him and demanded that he give Ivanishvili access to all his bank accounts and cryptocurrency transactions.
What followed was tragic.
On 21 August, Gogoberishvili and Giorgi Kemoklidze, deputy head of the penitentiary department, resigned. On 7 October 2025, authorities found Gogoberishvili dead with gunshot wounds. Investigators opened a case on suspicion of incitement to suicide.
Two days later, the State Security Service arrested Kemoklidze but offered a completely different account of events. According to the service, Kemoklidze conspired with Bachiashvili to bring carefully selected inmates into his cell and stage a beating. The service claimed that someone had switched off the cameras in the cell and that Kemoklidze had ordered the deletion of all footage from that day.
Bachiashvili’s lawyer called the allegations absurd and said his client did not even know Kemoklidze.
In February 2026, authorities released Bachiashvili from prison under a plea deal.
The role of Bera Ivanishvili, son of the billionaire often described as Georgia’s “power behind the scenes”
Bidzina Ivanishvili’s son, Bera Ivanishvili, also features in this story.
According to reports by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Georgian service and the Pirveli and Formula TV channels, Avtandil Bilanishvili, known as Katsro, has been friends with Bera Ivanishvili for many years. Social media contains numerous photographs of the two together.
On 10 October, the Pirveli TV programme Saturday with Nodar Meladze reported that the Peikrishvili brothers had sent a letter from prison to Amiko Janelidze, Bera Ivanishvili’s best man and a long-time friend of Bilanishvili.
According to the channel, the brothers thanked Janelidze for helping them in the past and expressed regret that they had been unable to contact him. Janelidze denied receiving any messages from the brothers when a reporter approached him.
Tamar Chergoleishvili, one of the leaders of the opposition Federalists party, wrote on Facebook about the prison incident: “Bera Ivanishvili’s own father has landed him in trouble.” She said neither the arrests of Kipiani and Bilanishvili nor the beating of Peikrishvili would help resolve the problem. Chergoleishvili also called for the release of the prison footage.
During an interview with lawyer Gogiashvili on Formula TV, the presenter asked why he so categorically ruled out a political motive for the beating, given the numerous social media posts showing crime bosses Kipiani and Bilanishvili alongside Bera Ivanishvili.
The lawyer replied that he could not comment on Kipiani’s connections because he had no information about them.
Bera Ivanishvili has not publicly commented on the prison incident. Earlier, on 30 September, he said that he and his family had faced a smear campaign for many years. Among other things, he said, people had accused him of protecting call centres and ordering the arrests of individuals.
“I want the defamatory attacks against me to be addressed through the courts,” Bera Ivanishvili wrote. According to his lawyer, David Asatiani, the lawsuit will target several Georgian media outlets and specific individuals.
The beating of crime boss Peikrishvili in Georgia
