Irakli Okruashvili
Irakli Okruashvili (Georgian ირაკლი ოქრუაშვილი; born November 6, 1973 in Tskhinvali ) is a Georgian politician (Movement for a United Georgia). The lawyer was from Juni to December 2004 Minister of the Interior, December 2004-November 2006 Defense Minister and six days in November 2006, Minister of Economic Development of Georgia. On 25 September 2007 he founded the opposition party Movement for a United Georgia. From April 2008 to 20 November 2012, he lived in exile in France.
Life
Profession
In 1990, he finished high school in Tbilisi with the Abitur. In 1995 he completed a state law examination at the State University of Tbilisi. Subsequently, he worked first in the line of the Central Election Commission of Georgia, and later as a consultant at the National TACIS project service body of the European Union. From February 1996 to 1998 he was an attorney with the law firm Kordsadse, Swandidse and Okruashvili, 1998-2000 with the law firm Okruashvili & Partners in Tbilisi. From 1998 he lectured on International Trade Law at the State University.
Okruashvili is a member of the world - lawyers Society and the International Law Society.
Opposition politicians in the era Shevardnadze
In October 2000 Okruashvili deputy of the then Minister of Justice Mikheil Saakashvili and his chief adviser in judicial matters. Together with him, he resigned in October 2001 in protest against the lack of support in fighting corruption from his office. In June 2002, he was elected on the list of opposition party United National Movement as a member of the city council of Tbilisi. Five months later, he became chairman of the Board of Inspectors of the City Council.
In the parliamentary elections in November 2003, he won a direct mandate in Gori. After the Rose Revolution, President Saakashvili appointed him first to the administrative head of the districts of Gori, Kaspi, Chaschuri, Djawa and Tskhinvali. In January 2004, the Parliament elected him Attorney General of Georgia. Okruashvili distinguished himself in the prosecution of corrupt officials and the transfer of ownership of their illegally acquired property to the state. He had the chiefs of the State Railways, the sports association and Postbank arrested just before they were able to dive with larger amounts.
Minister
On 10 June 2004 Okruashvili was nominated by President Saakashvili from Parliament to the Georgian Interior Minister. In the new office, he dismissed about 15,000 officials of traffic police and reorganized the police patrol.
On 15 December 2004 he was appointed minister of defense. He pushed ahead with the construction of the army to NATO standards. In April 2005 it was announced that Okruashvili denied military spending millions of dollars from a semi- official Army Support Fund, which was fed from funds that had been paid by corrupt government officials of the Shevardnadze era to the prosecutor to avoid criminal proceedings. The fund was set up behind the back of Parliament and parliamentary scrutiny was withdrawn.
Compared with Georgia breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, he was considered a hardliner. In May 2006 he announced that he would celebrate New Year 2007 in either reunited with Georgia South Ossetia, or resign as defense minister. On September 3, 2006 Okruashvili was shot with a helicopter over South Ossetia, after he was flown there, contrary to the ceasefire agreement of 11 July 2004 establishing military equipment. In the incident, he was unhurt, as the pilot was forced to land on Georgian territory.
According to a survey of daily newspaper Kwiris palitra Okruashvili was beginning of November 2006 viewed by more than 90 percent of Georgians as the most influential politician in the country after President Saakashvili. The sympathy he values was significantly lower: in a survey result of 13 November it certified only 53 % of the citizens, " most likeable politician " Georgia to be.
On November 11, 2006 it took over from President Saakashvili Okruashvili as defense minister and appointed him Minister of Economic Development. Six days later, he announced his resignation from the post. Before employees of the Ministry of Economic Affairs, he said he sat at the defense and could not come to terms with his detachment. Okruashvili explained later, there had been between him and Saakashvili to break after that was his plan to recapture South Ossetia " with minimal losses ," rejected.
Opposition politicians in the era Saakashvili
On 25 September 2007 Okruashvili founded the opposition party Movement for a United Georgia. At a press conference he accused President Saakashvili on the same day to have instructed him in July 2005 as Secretary of Defense, to liquidate the Georgian- Russian businessman Badri Patarkatsishvili. Saakashvili said that he should try to get him as the former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq al - Hariri, who was on his convoy in an attack killed to get rid of. He knew also that Saakashvili had then instructed Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili to let the opposition deputies Valery Gelashvili beat ( Republican Party ). When he was arrested in 2004 as Minister of the Interior the entrepreneur Temur Alasania, an uncle Saakashvili for bribery ( alleged bribe: U.S. $ 200,000 ), he had to release him on the instructions of the President.
Okruashvili was arrested three days later. He was accused of fraud, money laundering, negligence on duty and an abuse of authority. On October 9, he was released after he had declared guilty and pay a deposit of ten million Lari had deposited (about four million euros ). The prosecutor's office released a audio-visual recorded interrogation in which Okruashvili retracted his accusations against Saakashvili and described it as a political maneuver. About 2,000 people demonstrated in Tbilisi against the arrest. The arrest was the cause of the mass protests in November 2007.
On 15 December 2007, the Congress of the movement for a united Georgia elected him in absentia to Honorary Chairman.
In exile
On November 1, he left, by its own account under duress, according to the Georgian Prosecutor General " to a medical treatment," the Caucasus republic. On the same day he applied for political asylum in Germany. In a live broadcast from Munich, he renewed on November 5th at Georgian television station Imedi his accusations against President Saakashvili. On 14 November, the Georgian warrant for his arrest was renewed. On 27 November, he was subsequently arrested in Berlin. A request for extradition of the Georgian authorities was examined. January 9, 2008 Okruashvili was handed over to France, since he had entered with a Schengen visa issued by France to Germany. On January 31, he was released from police custody. On April 23, France granted him political asylum.
Okruashvili was condemned by Tbilisi City Court in the absence of an eleven-year prison sentence for " broad blackmail". According to the judge, he should have the businessman Jemal Svanidze in October 2006 forced him to transfer 2.6% of the shares in the mobile phone company Geocell. As he had an accomplice, the then head of the State Communications Commission, Dimitri Kitoschwili served. With the judgment of politicians lost the right to vote in Georgia. On June 30, 2011, he was sentenced by the Tbilisi City Court in Absentia for another two months in prison for the alleged creation of an illegal armed group a few weeks earlier.
In October 2010 Okruashvili stepped off the chair he co-founded the "Movement for a United Georgia " back. In November 2010 he founded, together with other prominent politicians, including Sozar Subari, Levan Gachechiladze and erosion Kitsmarishvili a new opposition party, the "Georgian Party ".
Return, arrest and release
After the change of government in Georgia and the announcement of an amnesty for political prisoners and exiles himself Okruaschwilli decided to return to his home and to seek his rehabilitation. Upon return from exile on 20 November 2012, he was arrested at the airport. By his own account, he returned to the change of government " in the hope of rehabilitation " to Georgia back. Georgian Justice Minister Tea Zulukiani held the former interior minister, although " a politically motivated persecution by the former government exposed ", but that meant not that he was criminally innocent.
After almost eight weeks of detention Okruashvili allowed to leave the jail. The Court of Appeal had left all allegations of bribery and extortion fall against him on 10 January 2013. The witnesses to the alleged creation of an illegal armed group had withdrawn their statements of 2011 and enforced. The next day, the Tbilisi City Court let him free on the prosecution's request for a deposit of 15,000 Georgian Lari. After his release Okruashvili told the Reuters news agency that he had to make any agreement with the government. Also, he had not been named by authorities as key witness against President Saakashvili, as suggested in the press.
In August 2013 Okruashvili was arrested pass on the Nice Airport after he was there involved in a scuffle with the Georgian politicians Merab Samadaschwili. According to a friend Okruashvili he had beaten the politicians in order to take revenge on his party, the United National Movement Party Saakashvili.
Private
He is married and has one daughter. In addition to the Georgian it dominates the Russian and the English language. In June 2008, his uncle, Zurab Giguaschwili, kidnapped by four masked men who drove him with a car in a suburb of Tbilisi, krankenhausreif beat, his laptop and his mobile phone was stolen.