After the Revolution

As I described in my previous post, Georgia’s richest citizen (and possibly the one who most resembled Mark Twain) died a “suspicious” death at the age of 52 on Tuesday. Badri Patarkatsishvili had been in exile in London after the Georgian government accused him of plotting a coup.

Gideon Lichfield, Jerusalem correspondent for The Economist, wrote about his encounter with Patarkatsishvili in his blog. Lichfield writes that he interviewed the late billionaire at his home in Tbilisi in 2002.

He describes meeting Patarkatsishvili:

“He had decided to grant me and a journalist from the Financial Times his first interview in a year and a half. We went to his house in Tbilisi, an enormous palace on a hill, where were shown into the garden—or rather gardens; there were several of them lumped together, each in a different style (Japanese, tropical, English country, and so on). I think we picked a spot under a gazebo, and sat waiting for Patarkatsishvili, who duly arrived in a golf buggy which he manoeuvred gingerly in between the bushes.”

He has published his unedited notes here. In them, Patarkatsishvili speaks of economic revival in Georgia and the need to strengthen ties with Russia but also with America and Europe.

Television station Russia Today posted their English-language report of Patarkatsishvili’s death on YouTube.

Open the story in YouTube by clicking here.