issued by the Registrar of the Court

ECHR 045 (2023)

09.02.2023

Former mayor of Tbilisi had right to liberty infringed with remand orders
In today’s Chamber judgment1 in the case of Ugulava v. Georgia (application no. 5432/15) the
European Court of Human Rights held, unanimously, that there had been:
no violation of Article 5 § 1 (right to liberty and security) of the European Convention on Human
Rights on account of the arrest and remand during the period between 3 July 2014 and 2 April
2015;
a violation of Article 5 § 1 of the European Convention on account of the remand between 2 April
and 17 September 2015;
no violation of Article 5 § 1 on account of the lack of a fixed period of detention in the orders of
4 July 2014 and 15 March 2015;
a violation of Article 5 § 3 (right to liberty and security), and
no violation of Article 18 (limitation on restriction of rights) in conjunction with Article 5.
The case concerned the arrest of Mr Ugulava on 3 July 2014 and his pre-trial detention until 17
September 2015. He was wanted in connection with money laundering and other crimes, with
several criminal proceedings taking place in parallel.
The Court found in particular that Mr Ugulava’s initial arrest and detention had been based on
legitimate suspicions that he might be a flight risk or otherwise harm the investigation. However the
manner in which the period ordered from 2 April until 17 September 2015 had been imposed had
not been sufficient to protect the applicant from arbitrariness. Furthermore, the authorities had
failed to account for the passage of time and changing circumstances in ordering further detention,
from 18 February 2015 onwards, in one of Mr Ugulava’s trials.

Principal facts
The applicant, Giorgi Ugulava, is a Georgian national who was born in 1975 and was detained in
Tbilisi at the time of application.

Mr Ugulava was one of the leaders of the United National Movement (ერთიანი ნაციონალური
მოძრაობა), a former governing political party, and was mayor of Tbilisi from 2005-13.
Between 2012 and 2015 Mr Ugulava was investigated and charged in connection with, in particular,
financial crimes, including aggravated embezzlement, misappropriation, abuse of power and money
laundering in five sets of investigations. The acts for which he was charged had taken place within
private companies, companies owned by the Tbilisi mayor’s office, or funds set up by that same
office.
On 5 June 2014 criminal proceedings were opened against Mr Ugulava in connection with money
laundering in offshore companies and a violent incident hindering the functioning of the Marneuli

1. Under Articles 43 and 44 of the Convention, this Chamber judgment is not final. During the three-month period following its delivery,
any party may request that the case be referred to the Grand Chamber of the Court. If such a request is made, a panel of five judges
considers whether the case deserves further examination. In that event, the Grand Chamber will hear the case and deliver a final
judgment. If the referral request is refused, the Chamber judgment will become final on that day.
Once a judgment becomes final, it is transmitted to the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe for supervision of its execution.
Further information about the execution process can be found here: www.coe.int/t/dghl/monitoring/execution.
district electoral commission. One of the witnesses in the case later alleged having been threatening
by the applicant. Mr Ugulava was arrested on 3 July 2014 while attempting to board a plane bound
for Kyiv (he asserted that the authorities had been aware of the planned trip) and placed on remand
as he was considered to be a flight risk by the Tbilisi City Court.
On 28 July 2014 Mr Ugulava was charged, ultimately with aggravated embezzlement and money
laundering, in connection with Imedi (a television company) and another company, Lynx Ltd. A new
period of pre-trial detention was ordered on 15 March 2015 owing to the risk of his hindering the
investigation by, among other actions, influencing witnesses, and the risk of his absconding, despite
his already having spent a considerable period on remand in connection with the 5 June 2014
criminal proceedings.
Mr Ugulava lodged a constitutional complaint in April 2015, which led to his release in September of
that year. The Constitutional Court held, in particular, the following:
“The normative substance of Article 205 § 2 of the Criminal Code of Procedure ... shall be
declared unconstitutional in relation to Article 18 §§ 1 and 6 of the Constitution ... in so far
as it allows for the detention of a person charged in a criminal case, if at the time he is
indicted in that case or sufficient grounds for indicting him are identified, he has already
spent nine months [in pre-trial detention] in connection with any other criminal case
pending against him.”

Complaints, procedure and composition of the Court

Relying on Articles 5 (right to liberty and security) and 18 (limitation on use of restrictions on rights),
Mr Ugulava complained, in particular, that his arrest and pre-trial detention had been against the
law, and that there had been no reasons given for that detention. Lastly, he alleged that the purpose
of his pre-trial detention had been to curtail his political activity.
The application was lodged with the European Court of Human Rights on 27 December 2014.
Judgment was given by a Chamber of seven judges, composed as follows:
Georges Ravarani (Luxembourg), President,
Mārtiņš Mits (Latvia),
Stéphanie Mourou-Vikström (Monaco),
María Elósegui (Spain),
Kateřina Šimáčková (the Czech Republic),
Mykola Gnatovskyy (Ukraine) and,
Françoise Tulkens (Belgium), ad hoc Judge,

and also Martina Keller, Deputy Section Registrar.

Decision of the Court

Article 5 § 1
Pre-trial detention 3 July 2014 to 2 April 2015
The Court was satisfied that there had been sufficient evidence that Mr Ugulava might have
committed the offences in question and so it had been reasonable to detain him. Under Georgian
law, a warrant was not necessary if the suspect were a flight risk, as had been the case here, a
decision which had been confirmed by the courts.
Regarding the arbitrariness of the decision or bad faith on the part of the authorities, Mr Ugulava
pointed to the fact that he had been detained on remand despite having been allowed to remain at

2
liberty without bail just two days before. The Court considered that the reasoning of the domestic
courts did not show signs of arbitrariness. This was particularly so as the applicant did not argue that
the two cases that had led to the separate decisions to release and to detain had been similar.
Conversely, the Government asserted that three new facts – alleged witness tampering, new charges
against him, an attempt to leave the country despite being summoned by the investigator – had
emerged which had lent weight to the decision to detain Mr Ugulava. In the light of this, the Court
stated that the decision to detain Mr Ugulava had not been taken in bad faith.
There had been no violation of Article 5 § 1 in respect of this period.
Pre-trial detention 2 April to 17 September 2015
Mr Ugulava argued that his detention in connection to the criminal proceedings of 28 July 2014 as of
2 April 2015, that is to say after the expiry of the statutory maximum time-limit of nine months for
such detention, had been unlawful and arbitrary. The Court noted the Georgian Constitutional
Court’s finding that any pre-trial-detention order had to be in line with the Constitution, which
prohibited the artificial continuation of the nine-month-detention maximum by formal means, in
order to ensure “prompt justice”. Until 2 April 2015 Mr Ugulava had been in detention during the
preparation of indictments in two separate cases. The domestic courts had failed to address whether
the new application for pre-trial detention had been in response to new facts or had simply been a
de facto extension of the original period. They also had not examined Mr Ugulava’s arguments
around lack of justification in the decision.
Such an order had required exceptional care on the part of the authorities, which had not been
forthcoming. There had therefore been a violation of Article 5 § 1 in respect of this period.
Fixing of time-limits for detention in decisions of 4 July 2014 and 15 March 2015
The Government submitted examples of similar detention orders where no time-limit had been set.
The Court held that this practice as applied in Mr Ugulava’s case had been in accordance with its
case-law, and therefore there had been no violation.

Article 5 § 3
Although the initial reasons given for Mr Ugulava’s pre-trial detention had been relevant and
sufficient on 3 July 2014, the Court held that the Tbilisi City Court had ignored the passage of time
and the changing circumstances of Mr Ugulava, effectively leaving it to him to demonstrate that his
continued detention had been unjustified. This had continued until his detention in itself became
contrary to the Convention on 2 April 2015.
In summary, from 18 February 2015 – the date of the Tbilisi City Court’s oral dismissal of the
applicant’s application to replace remand with bail – onwards, the applicant’s first pre-trial
detention in the criminal case connected to the violent incident at the Marneuli district electoral
commission had ceased to be based on sufficient grounds, in breach of Article 5 § 3.

Article 18 in conjunction with Article 5

Mr Ugulava alleged that his pre-trial detention had been ordered to hinder his political activities. The
Court noted that its findings under Article 5 were alone not sufficient to find a violation under Article
18.
In particular, the Court found that there had been a “reasonable suspicion” warranting his initial
arrest. There did not seem to have been any “ulterior motive” in that arrest and the initial detention
order. The general political context also was not sufficient to show that there would have been a
predominant purpose to hinder his participation in politics. There was no evidence put forward by
Mr Ugulava that the domestic courts had not been sufficiently independent of the executive
authorities or political figures who had made comments on his case. The Court noted that the same

3
court that had ordered his detention had previously released him three times in other cases, and the
Constitutional Court had ruled in his favour in the case. Regarding the second period of detention,
the application for pre-trial detention in parallel proceedings was standard practice at the relevant
time, and in any case the charges had appeared genuine and based on “reasonable suspicions”.
There was not sufficient evidence to conclude that the authorities had pursued the ulterior purpose
of removing Mr Ugulava from the political scene and therefore there had been no violation of Article
18 in conjunction with Article 5.

Just satisfaction (Article 41)

The Court held that Georgia was to pay the applicant 10,000 euros (EUR) in respect of non-pecuniary
damage.

The judgment is available only in English.

This press release is a document produced by the Registry. It does not bind the Court. Decisions,
judgments and further information about the Court can be found on www.echr.coe.int. To receive
the Court’s press releases, please subscribe here: www.echr.coe.int/RSS/en or follow us on Twitter
@ECHR_CEDH.
Press contacts
echrpress@echr.coe.int | tel.: +33 3 90 21 42 08

We would encourage journalists to send their enquiries via email.

Neil Connolly (tel.: + 33 3 90 21 48 05)
Tracey Turner-Tretz (tel.: + 33 3 88 41 35 30)
Denis Lambert (tel.: + 33 3 90 21 41 09)
Inci Ertekin (tel.: + 33 3 90 21 55 30)
Jane Swift (tel.: + 33 3 88 41 29 04)

The European Court of Human Rights was set up in Strasbourg by the Council of Europe member
States in 1959 to deal with alleged violations of the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights.