Bidzina Ivanishvili & family

Net worth over time

Biography

• Georgia's richest man Bidzina Ivanishvili made his money in metals and banking in Russia, then cashed out and moved back home in 2003.
• Ivanishvili was elected prime minister of Georgia in October 2012.
• Thirteen months later he stepped down after his party won the presidential elections, saying he'd fulfilled his task.
• He entrusted about $1 billion to Credit Suisse but lost most of it; more than $100 million of that sum was apparently stolen by the bank's manager Patrice Lescaudron.
• Lescaudron was found guilty in February 2018 and sentenced to five years in prison.
• In December 2022 Credit Suisse paid $210 million to Ivanishvili following a court decision.
• He returned to politics as honorary head of the Party Georgian Dream, a party he founded and won in the 2024 elections.
• In December 2024, the U.S. sanctioned him for "undermining the democratic and Euro-Atlantic future of Georgia for the benefit of the Russian Federation."
• Ivanishvili lives in a 108,000-square-foot compound in the mountains overlooking Tbilisi. His vast art collection includes Picasso's Dora Maar with Cat.
• The Georgian Dream party, which Ivanishvili founded in 2012, won the election for the second time in 2018, when Salome Zurabishvili became president.