The former head of a Georgian penitentiary where a onetime aide to the country’s ruling-party founder was allegedly beaten was found dead in a Tbilisi garage, local media reported on Wednesday.
The Interior Ministry told OCCRP that the investigation is being conducted under Article 115 of the Criminal Code, which pertains to suicide.
“We have no further details to share at the moment, but if additional information becomes available, we will provide an update,” a ministry spokesperson said.
Until last month, Gogoberashvili headed the Gldani No. 8 penitentiary in Tbilisi, where Giorgi Bachiashvili — a former aide to billionaire and Georgian Dream party founder Bidzina Ivanishvili — is being held.
Bachiashvili, once Ivanishvili’s right-hand man, reportedly fell out with him over a cryptocurrency deal. Ivanishvili later sued him, and authorities detained Bachiashvili in 2023 before releasing him on bail. He fled the country beginning of 2025, violating his bail conditions. While abroad, he vowed to expose his former boss, saying he would “make all efforts to ensure the international community understands exactly who Ivanishvili is, especially in the U.S.”
Back home he was sentenced in absentia to 11 years in prison for cryptocurrency misappropriation and money laundering. Authorities say they arrested him at the border in May, though Bachiashvili claims he was kidnapped and brought back to Georgia against his will.
In July, Bachiashvili released a letter alleging that prison director Gogoberashvili had summoned him multiple times and urged him to hand over details of his “bank accounts, cryptocurrency turnovers and account addresses to B. Ivanishvili.” When he refused, Gogoberashvili allegedly warned him that he was not in a position to say no.
Bachiashvili wrote that days later, he was attacked in his cell by another inmate who claimed he “just wanted to ask a few questions.”
“I told him [the attacker] that the conversation could not continue in that tone, realizing that he had been sent in to provoke me,” he wrote. “He then began verbally insulting and cursing me. I asked him to stop, after which he immediately became violent. He started punching me, grabbing me, and hitting my shoulder until it bled.”
According to the letter, the assailant smashed a glass tea cup over his head.
“I fell to my knees and briefly lost consciousness,” Bachiashvili said. “When I regained consciousness, the man was still beating me and was trying to cut my throat and face with a shard of the broken glass. He managed to cut my right wrist and continued punching me in the face, slamming my head against the wall several times.”
Bachiashvili said Gogoberashvili personally escorted him to the on-duty prison surgeon afterward.
“The prison director [Gogoberashvili] told me the man was a convicted inmate (he did not mention his name) and that he had been allowed into my cell on his orders supposedly for accommodation purposes,” he wrote. “But by then, everything was clear to me, because this was the execution of the earlier threat.”
After media reports surfaced, the Special Penitentiary Service said the incident was “a confrontation between two inmates — Bachiashvili and another individual — during which both sustained injuries,” adding that an internal investigation had been launched.
Gogoberashvili and his deputy resigned from their posts in late August without issuing any statements.
