Prosecutor’s Office Says Kitsmarishvili’s Death was Suicide, Case Closed

Georgian Chief Prosecutor’s Office said on June 22 it has closed investigation into death of Erosi Kitsmarishvili almost two years ago after concluding it was a suicide.

Kitsmarishvili, former co-owner of Rustavi 2 TV and ex-ambassador to Russia, was found dead on July 15, 2014 with a single gunshot wound to the head in his own car, parked in underground garage of an apartment building in Tbilisi center where he lived.

Kitsmarishvili’s brother and a lawyer representing deceased’s family, however, insist on foul play.

Prosecutor’s Office said that multiple forensic examinations in many of which experts invited by the Kitsmarishvili’s family were also involved, as well as other multiple evidence have ruled out possibility of presence of a person other than Kitsmarishvili himself in the car or at a distance from where the fatal shot from CZ pistol, which the deceased bought few hours earlier, could have been fired.

Prosecutor Nino Aglemashvili, who laid out details of the probe’s results, told journalists that investigators believe the financial problem was motive for the suicide.

She said that Kitsmarishvili had a debt of USD 312,000, plus GEL 120,000 arrear to his campaign staff – Kitsmarishvili was running for mayor of Rustavi city in the June, 2014 local elections, but lost the race.

“It is ridiculous to suggest that Erosi Kitsmarishvili committed suicide because of this amount of money,” Zurab Kitsmarishvili, Erosi’s brother told journalists after the Prosecutor’s Office announced about its findings. “It was not an issue over which he would have killed himself.”

“The case has been closed, but it remains uninvestigated; the prosecutor’s office has not done everything to shed the light on actual circumstances of the case,” Zurab Kitsmarishvili said, adding that he and his lawyer plan to lay out arguments to counter official investigation’s findings later.

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