Politics
TBILISI, Sept 6 (Reuters) - Seeking to counter charges that he is Russia's proxy in Georgia's elections, billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili has sold his last Russian business asset, his management firm said on Thursday.
The once-reclusive tycoon and his Georgia Dream coalition have been locked in a bitter fight with incumbent President Mikheil Saakashvili, who has called the businessman a Kremlin stooge.
Opinion polls show the coalition lags behind the ruling party for the election on Oct. 1, but Ivanishvili's political platform has angered the government and shaken up politics in Georgia, a strategically located Caucasus state of 4.5 million.
Unikor group in a statement said that Ivanishvili, 56, had sold Stoilenskaya Niva for $180 million to the U.S. Arco International Group and the transaction was expected to be completed within two month.
Ivanishvili told Reuters in an interview in May he was expecting to get $250-$300 million for Stoilenskaya Niva, or approximately what he had invested.
Earlier this year Ivanishvili sold his real estate development assets to Russian property group BIN for $982.5 million, his Russian bank Rossyisky Credit to a group of private investors for $352 million, as well as a pharmacy chain for approximately $60 million.
Ivanishvili's holdings in Russia were a third of his total assets, estimated by Forbes magazine at $6.4 billion.
Ivanishvili and his family have come under state scrutiny in a myriad of cases since he launched his political movement last year that managed to unite the usually fractious opposition and mount an unexpectedly strong challenge to Saakashvili.
Ivanishvili has seen some of his assets confiscated and then released after he paid a $49 million fine.
In July a Georgian court also froze bank accounts of another opposition figure, retired footballer Kakha Kaladze, in a money-laundering probe that Saakashvili opponents criticised as being aimed at intimidating a Georgian Dream parliamentary candidate.
Saakashvili became the West's darling when he rose to power after the bloodless "rose revolution" that toppled Eduard Shevardnadze in 2003. But opponents have since accused him of curbing political freedoms and criticised him for leading Georgia into a brief, disastrous war with Russia in August 2008.
Georgian forces were routed in five days and Russia went on to recognise breakaway South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states. (Reporting by Alexander Gelogayev and Margarita Antidze; Writing by Margarita Antidze; Editing by Gabriela Baczynska and Michael Roddy)
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