An investigative division of the Prosecutor General’s Office runs the case, according to its statement of Friday, on the basis of statements from the executives of Bitexchange LLC that the National Bank forwarded. Bitexchange’s executives accused her of engaging in entrepreneurial activity and of controlling in practice a network of enterprises regulated by the National Bank through stakes registered to family members and affiliated persons. They also accused her of trying to acquire a stake in a regulated enterprise to expand her own business, the prosecutors said, adding that the law on combating corruption bars public officials from business and the organic law on the National Bank bars board members and their families from partnership in a financial sector entity.
A seven-year mandate given in the crisis of 2023 meets a complaint from a company the bank itself had fined.
The bank said it had reviewed the circumstances in Bitexchange’s letters, made a preliminary internal assessment and passed the materials to the competent authorities, since legal verification lies outside its mandate. Its board will consider Keinishvili’s temporary recusal from meetings at its next session, pending the outcome of the investigation and in light of the bank’s reputational standards, the statement said, and it disclosed that Bitexchange itself was fined after a scheduled inspection for breaches of the rules against money laundering and the financing of terrorism.
On Thursday the pro-government Imedi channel aired a recording of a conversation between Keinishvili and the company’s owner, and the Russian-language outlet Novosti-Gruzia says its authenticity is unconfirmed. The channel links the bank’s fine to her demand for shares in the company. Bitexchange, founded in 2020, converts cryptocurrency and runs a network of 75 crypto cash machines across Georgia, belongs entirely to David Orjonikidze, a citizen of Georgia and the United Kingdom, and reported 5.8 million lari of revenue and 3.2 million of net profit for 2024, by the same outlet.
Keinishvili led the Georgian Red Cross from 2001 to 2012, sat in the parliament of 2012 to 2016 on Georgian Dream’s list as deputy chair of the budget committee, and was voted onto the board in September 2023 after then president Salome Zurabishvili tried to withdraw her nomination, days after the bank changed its rules to unfreeze the accounts of the sanctioned former prosecutor general Otar Partskhaladze and three vice-governors resigned, by Novosti-Gruzia’s account. The vote, which lifted the board from four members to six by the outlet’s count, gave it a quorum. A seven-year mandate given in the crisis of 2023 meets a complaint from a company the bank itself had fined.
The public will be informed of the results, the prosecutors’ statement ends, and the board’s next session will consider whether she sits while the prosecutors work.