Mikheil Kareli, former governor of Shida Kartli region, was arrested on September 23, while trying to flee country, Nika Gvaramia, deputy prosecutor general, said.
Gvaramia said Kareli was charged with bribery and illegal entrepreneurship.
Later on September 23 court sent Kareli to a pre-trial custody for two months pending investigation.
The deputy prosecutor general pointed out that the case concerned “sophisticated corruption scheme” involving an agricultural enterprise wherein the local municipality in the Shida Kartli region owned 21%. Through this scheme, Gvaramia said, Kareli and his accomplices were embezzling 50% of the enterprises profits.
Kareli was reportedly arrested in the Tbilisi airport.
Mikheil Kareli, who has close links to the ex-defense minister, Irakli Okruashvili, was dismissed from the governor's position on September 12 after condemning as politically-motivated arrest of several officials from his local administration.
Kareli has always been a source of controversy during his three years in office.
Public Defender, Sozar Subari, has been permanently accusing Kareli of intimidating local businessmen in the Shida Kartli region and illegally misappropriating their assets.
Saba Tsitsikashvili, a journalist from the Tbilisi-based Akhali Versia newspaper, who was investigating alleged wrongdoings by Mikheil Kareli and his administration, was attacked and brutally beaten up in Gori, the main town in Shida Kartli, in 2005.
Kareli was also associated with a controversial arrest of a local newspaper’s editor in Gori in 2005, who was later released after human right groups’ outcry.
Mikheil Kareli was also numerously accused by opposition lawmakers and even the Public Defender of patronizing smuggling in Shida Kartli region, which borders with breakaway South Ossetia.
Despite numerous allegations of wrongdoings not a single probe has been carried out by the prosecutor’s office into Kareli’s activities up to know.
In March, 2005 when the Shida Kartli police was reshuffled after arresting some police officers for having links to smuggling, President Saakashvili even defended Mikheil Kareli by saying that Kareli “is an honest person.”
President Saakashvili said on September 23 that he trusted Kareli two years ago.
“We should have intervened much sooner,” Saakashvili told reporters. “We had too much trust towards certain persons and they were receiving too much praise from us. It should not have been this way. However, it is better to react latter than never at all.”
Speculations about Kareli’s possible dismissal first emerged shortly after his major backer Irakli Okruashvili quitted the government last year.
Since then Kareli has turned into a low-key figure and rumors even said that he was the governor only nominally.
Recently the law enforcement officials launched probe into, what they called it, a corruption scheme in the local administration of the Shida Kartli region.
On September 12 several officials from the local administration, including Vasil Makharashvili, the governor of Gori; Nugzar Papunashvili, the deputy chairman of the Sakrebulo (City Council) and Gaioz Dzanadia, the governor of the Kareli district, were arrested on corruption charges.
Mikheil Kareli and a lawmaker Teo Tlashadze, who is also a close ally of Irakli Okruashvili, both condemned the arrests as politically motivated. Kareli was sacked on the same day on September 12.
Mikheil Kareli, former governor of Shida Kartli region, was arrested on September 23, while trying to flee country, Nika Gvaramia, deputy prosecutor general, said.
