Georgia's shark-owning billionaire tells voters: Don't risk war with Russia

Georgia's saviour. Russia's stooge. Philanthropist. Oligarch. Bidzina Ivanishvili has been called all these things, and more.

The billionaire, Georgia's richest person and the founder of its ruling party, is seldom seen in public and, of late, almost exclusively behind bulletproof glass. Yet his presence looms large over this small European country caught been Russia and the West and an election that could shape its destiny.

Ivanishvili can gaze down on downtown Tbilisi from a massive steel-and-glass clifftop mansion that rears about 60 metres over the capital, complete with helipad. He indulges exotic passions like keeping sharks and zebras and collecting rare trees.

The 68-year-old is viewed by many friends and foes alike as Georgia's most powerful figure, or eminence grise, even though he hasn't held public office for over a decade. He has cast Saturday's election as an existential fight to prevent a "Global War Party" in the West pushing Georgia into a ruinous conflict with former overlord Russia, like he says it did with Ukraine.

"Georgia and Ukraine were not allowed to join NATO and were left outside," he said in a rare public appearance at a pro-government rally in Tbilisi on Apr. 29.

"All such decisions are made by the Global War Party, which has a decisive influence on NATO and the European Union and which only sees Georgia and Ukraine as cannon fodder."

While most of Georgia's 3.7 million people are keen to move closer to the West by joining the EU and NATO, and largely don't trust Russia, opinion polls show, Ivanishvili's message resounds with many who want to avoid Ukraine's fate at all costs.

Memories are fresh of a 2008 war with Russia over the Moscow-backed breakway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which lasted five days and ended in Georgia's defeat.

Oleg Machavariani's home is only six miles from South Ossetia. The 75-year-old retired civil servant fears a rerun of history should the staunchly pro-Western and anti-Russian opposition win power.

"I think the first thing that will happen is that we'll get sucked into war."

Ivanishvili's Georgian Dream is on course to become the country's most popular party in the election, opinion polls indicate, though it is set to lose ground nationally since 2020 when it won a narrow majority in parliament.

Ivanishvili, who was strongly pro-Western throughout his party's first decade in power, was not available to be interviewed for this article, while Georgian Dream says it remains committed to integration with the West, and to a pragmatic policy towards neighbouring Russia.

Reuters interviews with several former close associates of the billionaire, as well as voters on both sides of the spectrum and Georgia experts, offer a window into the influence wielded by this mysterious magnate in the South Caucasus nation.

'THE CONSOLIDATION OF POWER IS HUGE'

Allies in the highest halls of power speak of him in near-messianic terms.

"When the people had lost all hope forever, a man appeared who gave it back to them," two-time former Prime Minster Irakli Garibashvili said of Ivanishvili's initial election win in 2012, after which he served as premier for one year.

Garibashvili was among a string of officials who heaped praise on Ivanishvili, the party's honorary chair, in speeches at a rally in September when - unlike the tycoon - they weren't shielded by bulletproof glass. Current premier Irakli Kobakhidze said Ivanishvili had sacrificed everything, including his wellbeing, to deliver Georgia from political enemies.

Ivanishvili spent much of the 1990s in Russia, founding banking, metals and telecoms companies and growing wealthy in the chaotic aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union.

His political opponents paint a picture of a power-hungry oligarch who wields dangerous control over former Soviet state Georgia. Many dub his party "Russian Dream". Some brand him a Kremlin asset, without presenting evidence for this.

"He has turned Georgia into a private company, of which he is the 100% owner," said Gia Khukhashvili, Ivanishvili's former top political adviser, who helped him launch Georgian Dream before their relationship broke down in 2014 when Khukhashvili accused him of retaining power from behind the scenes.

Giorgi Gakharia, who served as a Georgian Dream prime minister from 2019-21 and resigned after accusing Ivanishvili of interfering in government matters, echoed the critique.

"The consolidation of power is huge," said Gakharia, who now leads the For Georgia party, one of four main blocs of Georgia's splintered opposition running in the Oct. 26 election.

"There is not even one independent institution anymore in this country," said Gakharia, who listed the heads of Georgia's central bank, electoral commission, state audit office and judiciary as all being ultimately answerable to the magnate.

"All these people are directly connected with Ivanishvili. They are loyal to him."

Georgia's justice ministry, audit office and central bank didn't respond to requests for comment. The electoral commission said suggestions it was influenced by the ruling party were "unfounded and detrimental to the integrity of the electoral process."

'180-DEGREE TURN' ON WEST RHETORIC

Since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Ivanishvili has all but reversed Georgia's long-standing alignment with the West, one which he himself championed while prime minister in 2012-13.

This year, the Georgian Dream government has pushed through bills on "foreign agents", which requires organisations receiving more than 20% of funding from abroad to register as such, and cracked down on LGBT rights, decisions praised by Moscow and denounced by critics as anti-democratic and Russian-inspired.

The moves, along with increased anti-Western rhetoric from Tbilisi, have led to the U.S. and EU suspending some aid to Georgia and the bloc freezing the country's membership application.

Giorgi Margvelashvili, Georgia's president in 2013-18 and a close colleague of Ivanishvili in opposition and the early years in power, said the billionaire had appeared sincerely pro-Western while in frontline politics.

He described him as a calm, strategic thinker who sought to balance a pro-EU and NATO policy with an imperative to avoid provoking Georgia's vast northern neighbour.

Margvelashvili said there had nonetheless been a new hostility in Ivanishvili's anti-West rhetoric since the Ukraine war, a shift which seemed to him deeply out of character.

"We can only speculate what forced Bidzina Ivanishvili into this kind of political turmoil," Margvelashvili said. "Suddenly changing the rhetoric 180 degrees is not his style."

NATO agreed at a 2008 Budapest summit that Georgia would eventually become a member. That was a few months before the war with Russia, and little progress has been made since.

Many Georgians are wary of the ordeal of Ukraine, where the pro-Western Maidan protests of 2013-2014 ousted a pro-Russian government before Moscow annexed Crimea and began supplying arms to separatists in the country's east.

Russian officials have repeatedly said they don't interfere with sovereign states and have accused the West of meddling in Georgian politics. Russia's foreign spy chief Sergei Naryshkin said this month he was sure Georgians would make the "correct" choice and vote for "healthy, patriotic forces".

Ex-adviser Khukhashvili said Ivanishvili had told him that he left Russia after Putin's rise to power in 2000, believing the president would crack down on politically ambitious businessmen. Khukhashvili said Ivanishvili's shift in foreign policy since the Ukraine conflict was an attempt to spare himself and Georgia from Putin's wrath.

Ivanishvili himself took a big hit in the West in 2020, when a rogue banker at Credit Suisse embezzled about $1 billion of his cash. Though much of the money has been recovered, his allies have cited the case as proof that he is under "de facto" U.S. sanctions. The U.S. has repeatedly said that Ivanishvili hasn't been sanctioned.

LET 'ORDINARY PEOPLE' LEAD GEORGIA

Natalie Sabanadze, a former Georgian ambassador to the EU, told Reuters Georgian Dream also drew strength from the unpopularity of the opposition, which has struggled to shake off its association with the divisive figure of former Georgian leader Mikheil Saakashvili, who ruled until 2012 and is now serving a six-year jail term for abuse of power.

Despite deteriorating relations with the West, the ruling party can still rely on a "status-quo factor", especially among rural and public-sector workers, said Sabanadze, a senior research fellow at London think-tank Chatham House.

Indeed, in the poor, rural western part of Georgia where Ivanishvili grew up, he's revered by many locals as a philanthropist. Levan Ivanashvili, district mayor in the town of Sachkhere, pointed out projects financed by the favourite son: three schools, a football stadium, swimming pool, hospital and hotel, as well as a restoration of the historic castle.

Other voters have had enough.

"Mr Ivanishvili has done positive things for Georgia in the past, but he has declined, Georgia under him is declining," Nikoloz Shurgaia said at an opposition rally in Tbilisi. "Let a new generation of politicians, ordinary people, lead Georgia to a better future."