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BBC Investigation Links Kezerashvili to a Global Scam Network

The BBC today published an article titled “On the hunt for the businessmen behind a billion-dollar scam” detailing the results of a year-long journalistic investigation into a global fraudulent trading network that defrauded unwitting customers. The investigation produced a number of names that eventually led to a single figure – David Kezerashvili, the former defense minister of Georgia. The journalistic investigation spanned one year and identified a shadowy network of individuals behind it.

Known to the police as the Milton Group (the name used by scammers but abandoned in 2020), it comprised 152 brands, including Solo Capitals, defrauding customers of thousands and hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Investigators mapped the links between companies in the Milton group using publicly available company documents. According to the article, five names kept popping up, listed as directors of Milton’s trading platforms or supporting technology companies – David Todua, Rati Tchelidze, Guram Gogeshvili, Joseph Mgeladze and Michael Benimini.

Investigators also plugged the five names into the Panama Papers (a massive 2016 leak detailing offshore companies) and found that four people – Tchelidze, Gogeshvili, Mgeladze and Benimini – were listed as directors or senior figures in a group of linked offshore companies or subsidiaries that predated the aforementioned Milton group. Many of these companies were linked in some way to David Kezerashvili.

The article reads that there are no publicly available documents linking Kezerashvili to the pre-Milton network, however, it notes that his name came up on multiple occasions, identifying him as either the founder of the parent companies in the network or as one of the initial shareholders. The investigation concludes that “behind the scenes, Kezerashvili appeared to be at the center of that network”.

The journalistic investigation found no publicly available documentation linking Kezerashvili to the fraudulent companies, and “there was no evidence that he had a direct financial interest in the Milton brands”. However, the authors write that several former Milton employees who had direct dealings with Kezerashvili have confidentially revealed that they knew of his involvement with the Milton group.

There are a number of other indirect indications of the former defense minister’s links to the Milton brands identified during the investigation, such as a private email server used exclusively by Milton Group companies and those owned by Kezerashvili, office buildings in Kyiv owned by him and housing the fraud call center, close social ties between the four senior Milton Group figures and Kezerashvili, as evidenced by social media profiles and photos, his promotion of fraud trading platforms on his social media accounts, etc.

The investigator posed as a customer to understand how the process worked. According to the article, the traceable money was split into small fractions, apparently to make it harder for victims or lawyers to find, and moved through many different bitcoin wallets, “all apparently linked to the Milton group”. The group’s operations have been investigated before, by Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter and others, but the BBC set out to identify the senior figures behind the scam.

According to the article, Kezerashvili told the BBC via his lawyers that he strongly denied any involvement with the Milton group, or that he gained financially from scams.

Chelidze, Gogeshvili and Mgeladze, denied the BBC investigative team’s accusations, Benimini did not respond to BBC’s questions.

David Kezerashvili was Minister of Defence in 2006-2008. In 2012, after the change of government, several criminal cases were brought against him. He was acquitted in absentia in two of them. However, he was convicted in absentia by a Georgian court for embezzling more than €5 million in state funds. He was living in London at the time. In 2014 the French courts and in 2016 the British courts refused to extradite him to Georgia. Last month, the Tbilisi Court of Appeal upheld the first-instance verdict against Kezerashvili, who is also the founder of the government-critical TV channel ‘Formula’, and ordered him to pay €5,060,000 to the Ministry of Defense.

Kezerashvili’s response  

Davit Kezerashvili responded to the accusations made in the journalistic investigation on his Facebook page, saying that he had “never” had any connection with the issue of so-called call centers described by BBC. “I declare with full responsibility that I have never participated in such schemes.”

Kezerashvili said he would not ignore the damage caused to him by the published material, especially when “politicized justice is being carried out by the Georgian authorities” against him and Formula TV, which he founded. He also noted that this attack by the ruling party has an organized nature.

“Despite the fact that I consider British Public Broadcasting as a media outlet of a high journalistic standard, this is the case when I have many questions on the issues related to me,” Kezerashvili said, adding that he would use all legal levers to confirm “both the inaccuracy of the facts and the false assumptions made as a result of their misinterpretation” and “it will not take long.”

“I have always expressed my readiness to cooperate with the investigative bodies of European countries on the issue of call centers, and I am still ready to do so, especially since my place of residence as a person in political exile is Great Britain, the reliability of whose judicial system is beyond any doubt,” the former defense minister stressed.

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This post is also available in: ქართული (Georgian) Русский (Russian)

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