Georgia’s Prosecutor General’s Office announced the closure of the investigation into the murder of Niko Kvaratskhelia, founder of Georgia’s first online content-sharing platform Feedc, saying brothers Guram and David Kakulia, along with Besarion (Busa) Zhvania, son of the late Prime Minister Zurab Zhvania, organized the killing.
Kvaratskhelia, 22, was fatally shot in Tbilisi in 2021. The case drew widespread public attention. In 2023, then-President Salome Zurabishvili posthumously awarded him the Medal of Honor.
Tbilisi Prosecutor Giorgi Mikaia said on February 17 that the Interior Ministry investigation found the Kakulia brothers planned the killing “in revenge” against his father, Gia Kvaratskhelia, the “so-called thief-in-law,” [a term denoting criminal underworld bosses] and “to strengthen their authority in the criminal underworld.”
According to Mikaia, the father of the Kakulia brothers – “so-called thief-in-law Davit Kakulia” – was killed in Moscow in 2001, and “information had circulated within the ‘thieves’ underworld’ and the wider public that the killing had allegedly been commissioned by Gia Kvaratskhelia.”
“Guram and David Kakulia told their friend Besarion Zhvania about their plan and agreed to organize the killing,” the prosecutor said, adding that Zhvania then contacted Aleko Chelidze and Giorgi Kaviladze to carry it out.
Besarion Zhvania is the son of Zurab Zhvania, Georgia’s Prime Minister from 2004 to 2005, who was found dead under mysterious circumstances in 2005.
Aleko Chelidze and Giorgi Kaviladze are already serving 17 and 16-year prison sentences for the intentional killing.
The Kakulia brothers are serving nine years for a separate attempted murder case.
Meanwhile, Besarion Zhvania has been declared wanted. His mother, Nino Kadagidze-Zhvania, said the charges were “very unexpected.” She said he was a childhood friend of one of the Kakulia brothers, but denied any involvement or knowledge of the murder plan.
The three face up to 20 years or life in prison.
“Nothing is new to me,” Kvaratskhelia’s mother, Iza Omadze, said after announcing the charges. She suggested in 2022, when the Kakulia brothers were arrested in a separate case, that they were the organizers of her son’s killing. The Prosecutor’s Office had not previously linked them to the case.
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