Affiliated media: TV Pirveli, TV Channel

Incident date: July 30, 2025

Attack type:

• Court trial

Who attacked: Non-authorities

Source: OC Media

Location: Georgia, Tbilisi

Additional information:

The opposition-aligned TV channel Pirveli has claimed that Cartu Bank, a bank established by Georgian Dream founder and billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, has pressed defamation charges against them for calling it ‘Ivanishvili’s bank’. Pirveli’s head of news, Nodar Meladze, said the channel received the documents from Tbilisi City Court on Monday evening. Meladze told OC Media that the case concerned a report aired during TV Pirveli’s main news program on 1 May, which covered a resolution by the European People’s Party (EPP), the largest political group in the EU Parliament, against Ivanishvili. According to Pirveli, the bank claimed that the terminology used by the channel — including phrases like ‘Ivanishvili’s bank’ and ‘the oligarch’s bank’ — was defamatory and Ivanishvili was no longer officially in charge of the bank.