OCCRP Refutes Georgian Government Attacks on Story

On August 9, OCCRP and several Georgian and Russian media partners reported that the wife of Bidzina Ivanishvili, the founder of Georgia's ruling party, had acquired properties in Russia. 

After the story’s publication, the Georgian Dream party, of which Ivanishvili still serves as honorary chairman, released a statement calling these findings “false.” Pro-government television stations and media organizations claimed without evidence that the basic facts of the story were incorrect, and unleashed a torrent of criticism on OCCRP and its local partners. OCCRP disputes these claims, but given the attacks on our colleagues within Georgia this week, we would like to provide additional information on the basis of our reporting. 

While OCCRP understands the political sensitivity of its findings, it is our mission and obligation to report information that may be in the public interest. OCCRP is not a Georgian organization, and has no political affiliation or interest in any political party inside or outside of Georgia. OCCRP is an independent investigative media organization and simply seeks to provide its audience with the best information it can, in as timely a manner as possible. 

“These are matters of public record and not politics,” said OCCRP Publisher Drew Sullivan. “We’re not interpreting the information, just reporting it. We stand by the facts we presented. They are accurate.”

Ivanishvili, a billionaire who made his fortune in Russia in the 1990s, said when he created the Georgian Dream party in 2011 that he would give up his Russian passport and sell his businesses in the country. In 2013, as the country's prime minister, Ivanishvili filed asset declaration forms identifying his family’s assets in Russia: a house in an upscale Moscow district, and three plots of land near Peredelkino, an elite dacha settlement outside of the capital. (While the house was owned by both his wife, Ekaterine Khvedelidze, and son, Uta Ivanishvili, the land was owned solely by his wife.) 

• Ivanishvili’s wife, Ekaterine Khvedelidze, added to her real estate holdings in 2021 and 2024, acquiring two more land plots and a second house adjacent to the family’s existing properties near Peredelkino. Together, the land and houses are estimated to be worth at least $14.7 million.

• The Russian-registered company Aqua Space LLC, which is directly linked to Ivanishvili and his family, has been earning interest from regularly making multi-million-ruble short-term deposits at Sberbank, which has been sanctioned by the U.S. since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

• The company has also been managing the family's primary Moscow residence, collecting rent payments from the tenant and transferring most of it on the same day to Ivanishvili’s wife.

In 2023, a new law closed access to Russia’s real estate register. However, many of these records are filed at other state bodies, or with commercial agencies. OCCRP obtained and verified the Russian land documents used in its story through multiple sources with access to government databases.

To protect our sources, we cannot say anything more about their identities or how we have obtained the records this story is based on. However, we would like to publicly share the following document as proof of the accuracy of our reporting. It is an official Russian record showing that one of the properties in question — a plot of land — was transferred to Ekaterine Khevelidze by Ucha Mamatsashvili, Bidzina Ivanishvili’s cousin, earlier this year.