Georgia's State Security Service Charges Former Railway CEO in Corruption Case
By Messenger Staff
Wednesday, June 17, 2026
Georgia's State Security Service has opened criminal proceedings against former Georgian Railway CEO Davit Peradze and seven others over an alleged corruption scheme that drained millions from the state company through stolen scrap metal and falsified contracts. Six suspects were detained. Peradze was declared wanted.
The charges include large-scale fraud, abuse of official position, document forgery, and money laundering, carrying nine to twelve years in prison if convicted.
Peradze ran Georgian Railway from 2017 until May 2025 and had close ties to Georgian Dream founder Bidzina Ivanishvili, having previously worked at Ivanishvili's Cartu Group and later at an energy project backed by his Co-Investment Fund.
At a June 16 briefing, Emzar Gagnidze, director of the SSSG's Anti-Corruption Agency, said Peradze formed an "organized criminal group acting in coordination and with a structured form" in fall 2019. The group collected and sold scrap metal belonging to Georgian Railway through shell companies, using false tax documents to give the stolen material "an ostensibly legal origin." Metal was removed from railway facilities "without counting and weighing, and in some cases with artificially reduced quantities" recorded in documents, making it impossible to trace the losses. Between 2020 and 2021, investigators say 22,120 tons of scrap metal were stolen and sold to Rustavi-based LLC Geostil for GEL 17.3 million, with proceeds "periodically withdrawn in cash and distributed among the group members."
The investigation also covers a 2022 contract with LLC Raveld for railway track repairs worth just under USD 1 million. Officials say the number of completed rail welds was inflated in official documents from 987 to 1,200, resulting in an excess payment of GEL 403,844.
Gagnidze said investigators are continuing to identify additional members of the group.
