After the Revolution

The richest citizen of Georgia died suspiciously on Tuesday at the age of 52. 

I wrote about Badri Patarkatsishvili on Jan. 30 and and Jan. 15. He was the billionaire media mogul who supported Georigan President Mikheil Saakashvili during the Rose Revolution but ran against him in the most recent election.

He was in exile, having been accused of plotting a coup after last year’s protests.

Patarkatsishvili denied the charges of plotting to overthrow the government. However, according to an article from Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, he did admit to offering police large sums of money not to break up the protests.

According to the article,

“[o]n December 27, [Patarkatsishvili] briefly pulled out of the presidential election, saying his life was in danger. The same month, he told AP that he had obtained a video showing a Georgian Interior Ministry official commissioning a Chechen warlord to kill him in London.

“…In October, former Defense Minister Irakli Okruashvili stunned Georgians by alleging in a televised statement that Saakashvili had commissioned him to assassinate Patarkatsishvili. Okruashvili was arrested and later retracted the statement.”

According to an article from the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, Patarkatsishvili had told the media, “I have 120 bodyguards but I know that’s not enough. I don’t feel safe anywhere and that is why I’m particularly not going to Georgia.” 

Patarkatsishvili died in his mansion outside London.

Officials have not completed the autopsy, but according to an article from the BBC, his aides say he had a heart attack. British officials have classified Patarkatsishvili’s death as “suspicious.”

No one is forgetting that Patarkatsishvili made his money in Russia during the chaos of the privatization after the collapse of the Soviet Union by working with now exiled Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky.

He was a wanted man in Russia as well, facing embezzlement charges.

Relations between England and Russia still have yet to heal since the 2006 murder in London by radioactive poisoning of former Russian security officer and Kremlin critic Aleksander Litvinenko.

For a BBC timeline of events surrounding Litvinenko’s death, click here.