Former Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili has been sentenced to nine years in prison for alleged embezzlement of GEL9mn of Georgian state funds.

Judge Badri Kochlamazashvili of the Tbilisi City Court found the ex-head of state guilty of misspending budget funds then worth $5.4mn from 2009-12 during his second presidential term.

Saakashvili, president and leader of the United National Movement government from 2004-13, was convicted in absentia of abuse of power in a separate case in 2018.

On his return to Georgia in 2021 after a stint abroad, the politician was arrested and has since been serving a six-year prison sentence.

In May 2022 the political was transferred to a prison hospital to receive crucial treatment following a months-long hunger strike.

Kochlamazashvili’s ruling suggests that an extra three years will be tacked onto Saakashvili’s original six-year sentence, meaning he will now not be eligible for release until late 2030.

The allegations of embezzlement have been dubbed the 'Jackets case' by the media as Saakashvili allegedly used state money for personal expenses including designer suits and coats, luxury holidays, and cosmetic procedures.

The court accused the ex-president of embezzling funds from Georgia’s Special State Protection Service (SSPS), which deals with the protection of high-ranking officials.

The former head of the service, Teimuraz Janashia, was also convicted in the Jackets Case and has been fined GEL300,000 (about $100,000) for abuse of office and “the use of his position against the public interest”, as stated by Kochlamazashvili, Civil.ge reported.

Both Saakashvili and Janashia have called the trial politically motivated, claims echoed by members of the UNM party, of which Saakashvili is still honorary chair, and other Georgian opposition groups.

“The [GD] regime is very afraid of Mikheil Saakashvili, as the main opposition figure. It does everything to ensure that Mikheil Saakashvili remains behind bars,” Petre Tsiskarishvili, the UNM secretary general said, as quoted by Civil.ge.

As reported by Reuters, television footage of the court room following the verdict depicts supporters of Saakashvili loudly accusing Kochlamazashvili of being a “slave” of both the ruling Georgian Dream (GD) government and the party’s oligarch founder, Bidzina Ivanishvili.

Saakashvili did not attend the March 12 court session, citing illness. The day before the verdict was announced, the clinical director of Vivamed, where Saakashvili is serving his sentence, stated that the politician has chronic health issues and his condition is worsening, RFE/RL’s Georgia service reported.

Saakashvili replaced Georgia’s Soviet-era leader Eduard Shevardnadze as president in 2004 following the bloodless Rose Revolution.

While Saakashvili’s first term was characterised by Georgia’s successful orientation towards the West and a wave of ambitious public sector reforms, a short but bloody war lost to Russia in 2008, alongside allegations of police brutality, increasingly authoritarianism, corruption and mistreatment of male inmates, marred the latter part of his tenure.