Swiss bank sues Georgian 'shadow ruler' Ivanishvili
Swiss bank Credit Suisse has accused Bidzina Ivanishvili, the former prime minister of Georgia, founder and former head of the ruling Georgian Dream party, of illegally publishing a confidential document and is suing him.
Bidzina Ivanishvili is considered by many in Georgia and beyond its borders as a powerful ‘shadow ruler’ of the country, despite the fact that by that moment he had left all official positions.
According to Bloomberg, the problem was that Ivanishvili and his adviser published a report of the Swiss banking regulator for 2017, which contains information about the former banker convicted of fraud, Patrice Lescadron. Credit Suisse was entitled to maintain the confidentiality of the document on the basis of a court decision.
A number of investors, including Bidzina Ivanishvili, became victims of Lescadron’s fraudulent scheme. The document was published on the csvictors.com website. A hearing of the parties took place in London on Thursday, at which it was decided to remove the document from this site before the start of the court hearings.
According to Bloomberg, a PR company, Metigen, is behind this site. Metigen CEO Charlie Wigan called it “outrageous that Credit Suisse itself is a victim of a crime, but that it is the only one preventing the document from being used.”
The case of Patrice Lescadron, who committed suicide in 2020, went public in 2015. According to media reports, the banker confessed to forging signatures, trading transactions and trying to buy time to compensate for the financial losses in 2008. Credit Suisse claimed that the banker was acting alone.
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Billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili entered Georgian politics in 2011, forming an opposition political coalition called the Georgian Dream, which united the entire spectrum of opposition at the time and opposed President Saakashvili and his government.
Ivanishvili’s coalition won parliamentary elections in October 2012 and ended the nine-year rule of the United National Movement. In November 2012, Ivanishvili became the country’s prime minister.
Thirteen months after his party won the presidential election, Ivanishvili announced that he had done his job and voluntarily resigned as prime minister.
Then Ivanishvili announced that he was moving into the civilian sector. After his resignation, four prime ministers were replaced in the country.
In April 2018, a few months before the presidential elections, Ivanishvili returned to public politics and became the chairman of the ruling team “Georgian Dream – Democratic Georgia”.
On February 11, 2021, after winning the parliamentary elections boycotted by the opposition, Ivanishvili left politics for the second time – now, according to him, finally.
The main reason for leaving politics, he said, is that “almost all of his stated goals have been achieved.”
Ivanishvili is the richest Georgian. Forbes estimates his fortune at $ 4.8 billion.
