Who is Ivanishvili, the man with a fortune equivalent to a fifth of the entire Georgian economy?

Bidzina Ivanishvili was suddenly there again, when he was hoisted on the shield as honorary chairman by the ruling party Georgian Dream at the end of December. Almost three years earlier, the 68-year-old businessman and billionaire, who founded the party in 2012, had announced his final retirement from politics.

Apparently he himself was not looking forward to a comeback at all. He even called it “unpleasant”. However, according to Ivanishvili, his return to politics is necessary to prevent his party – by far the largest in the country – from falling prey to corruption and infighting in the run-up to the parliamentary elections later this year.

In 2013, after leading his young party to election victories and briefly serving as prime minister, he concluded that his political mission had been accomplished. Five years later, when he was appointed party chairman, he had to return to this position. Few believed him when he once again said goodbye to politics in 2021 to seek the peace of his ‘normal life’.

His critics claim that the wealthy Ivanishvili – his wealth is comparable in size to a fifth of the entire Georgian economy – has been in control all these years. It was Ivanishvili himself who once declared that he preferred the shadows to the spotlight. “I normally prefer not to be the center of attention,” he said in 2005. “I never even celebrate my birthday.”

This time his return comes at a politically important moment: under the leadership of Georgian Dream, parliament is discussing a controversial law based on the Russian model. Organizations that receive more than 20 percent of their funding from abroad are at risk of being labeled an “organization pursuing the interests of a foreign power.”

Large-scale protests

The law has been causing a stir in Georgia for weeks. The capital Tbilisi has been the scene of large-scale protests for days. Opponents fear that – exactly as President Putin does in Russia – the law will be used to silence critical voices. For example, the ruling party Georgian Dream would like to strengthen its grip on power.

The law only requires a third vote in parliament and signature by the president. The European Union speaks of a “very worrying development” and warns that approval of this law could jeopardize Georgia’s candidacy for membership of the European Union.

A year after Georgia was given the status of candidate member of the EU, the power grab by Georgian Dream threatens to drive the country back into the arms of Russia. And there is no one in the country who is more emphatically the face of that development than Bidzina Ivanishvili, the man who amassed his immense fortune in Russia.

He may be the richest man in the country, but his childhood in the village of Chorvila in the then Soviet Union was characterized by great poverty. After obtaining his doctorate in economics in Moscow, he steadily built up an extensive empire in Russia in the 1990s in, among other things, the steel and iron industry and banking.

Semibankirschina

His wealth rose to such great heights that he became part of the group of Russian oligarchs known as the Semibankirschina. That group was the driving financial force behind the re-election of Russian President Boris Yeltsin in 1996.

In 2011, Ivanishvili returned to Georgia with his newly founded party to put an end to the government of the power-hungry Mikheil Saakashvili, who, as a revolutionary leader, tried to wrest the country from Moscow’s sphere of influence. Ivanishvili argued at the time that his own reputation in Russia could help him ease relations with Moscow after Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008.

After his first departure from politics, a futuristic building in Tbilisi became Ivanishvili’s new base. He then had time again to focus on his great passion: giant trees. He gets so much happiness from this that he had special species from all over Georgia plucked from the ground and brought together in a new tree park on the Black Sea. Images of a 100-year-old tree making the crossing by sea were broadcast around the world.

De-oligarchization

Brussels demands that oligarchs like Ivanishvili leave the field if Georgia is to become a member of the European Union. The European Commission called this “de-oligarchization” in 2022. Just before that, the European Parliament had noted that Russia would circumvent Western sanctions through Georgia, and Ivanishvili’s name was explicitly mentioned.

Amid the unrest over the apparently pro-Russian course of Georgian Dream, Ivanishvili is now once again in the spotlight due to his close ties with Russia. He himself claims to embrace Georgian EU membership.

But anyone who heard him in front of an audience of supporters last week railing against a “global war party” that is said to have infiltrated the EU and dragged Georgia into a conflict with Russia will be impressed by his sincerity when it comes to Georgia’s European ambitions. questioning.