State Security Service arrests former Defence Minister Juansher Burchuladze

The State Security Service of Georgia (SSSG) has arrested Juansher Burchuladze, the former Minister of Defence of Georgia.

As the agency reported at a briefing, “Following operational investigative activities, Georgia’s former Defence Minister Juansher Burchuladze has been arrested on a court order in connection with the abuse of official powers by a person holding state-political office and the legalisation of illegal income, which involved receiving exceptionally large sums.”

“The investigation has established that on the instructions of Juansher Burchuladze, to secure advantages for himself and V.M., the then Deputy Defence Minister G.Kh. and the then head of the ministry’s procurement department V.Gh., with the assistance of V.M. (a close relative of the minister), deliberately created a non-competitive environment during the Defence Ministry’s acquisition of magnetic resonance imaging equipment. Through fictitious transactions, they artificially inflated the real market value of the equipment, resulting in an MRI scanner with a genuine value of GEL 2,606,272 being supplied to Georgia’s Defence Ministry for GEL 3,940,000. These criminal activities caused property damage of GEL 1,333,728 to the Defence Ministry.

Furthermore, to conceal and disguise the source of exceptionally large amounts of illegal and/or unjustified assets whose legal origin he could not substantiate, Juansher Burchuladze undertook the following actions to give these assets a legitimate appearance: In January 2025, the Burchuladze family purchased a plot of land with a residential house in Spain’s Málaga province for 544,000 euros.

Since neither Juansher Burchuladze nor his wife had recorded the legal origin of this sum, a fictitious sales contract was drawn up on December 9, 2024, between Burchuladze’s wife and a third party regarding the sale of property located on Nushi Gardens Street in Tskneti village for 620,000 euros, to conceal the real source of the money. In reality, the Burchuladze family had not sold this property, and the contract’s sole purpose was to disguise the origin of the funds to be transferred to Spain. Additionally, fictitious loan agreements were employed.

It should be noted that to conceal the illegal origin of the aforementioned 544,000 euros, Burchuladze failed to declare the Spanish property purchase in his March 2025 official asset declaration. Through these methods, Juansher Burchuladze conducted money laundering of exceptionally large amounts totalling GEL 1,593,212 in illegal/unjustified income.

The investigation into the aforementioned criminal activities is proceeding under Article 194, Part 3, Subparagraph ‘g’ and Article 332, Part 2 of Georgia’s Criminal Code, which provides for imprisonment of 9 to 12 years,” the State Security Service reported.

Juansher Burchuladze served as Defence Minister from 2021 to 2024.