Despotic behavior is proving unprofitable for Bidzina Ivanishvili, Georgia’s richest man who is universally considered the puppet master of Georgian politics. His personal fortune has plummeted, according to the newly released Forbes list of the world’s billionaires.

Ivanishvili controls the Georgian Dream party, which in 2024 succeeded in completing a geopolitical U-turn away from integration into Western political and security institutions and back toward Russia. Since claiming victory in a parliamentary election marred by widespread irregularities, Georgian Dream has dismantled the country’s nascent system of checks and balances and cemented the party’s grip on power. Popular protests against the ruling party’s usurpation of power are ongoing.

In response to the Georgian government’s rejection of Western values, the United States slapped sanctions on Ivanishvili in late 2024, asserting that his “and Georgian Dream’s actions have eroded democratic institutions, enabled human rights abuses, and curbed the exercise of fundamental freedoms in Georgia.”

To beat sanctions, Ivanishvili appeared to engineer the adoption of legislation earlier in 2024 that gave a tax amnesty to those moving money back to Georgia from offshore havens.  Such financial gyrations, however, seem to have still taken a big bite out of his portfolio. According to the Forbes list for 2025, Ivanishvili’s fortune shrank by roughly 45 percent over the past year and now stands at $2.7 billion, down from $4.9 billion in early 2024. He is currently ranked as the 1,362nd richest individual in the world, according to Forbes.

Ivanishvili remains the wealthiest person in Georgia, but he is not the richest Georgian in the world. That title belongs to Mikhail Lomtadze, who is ranked 597th on the Forbes 2025 list with $5.9 billion in personal assets. Lomtadze, who resides in Kazakhstan, is the founder and CEO of the Kaspi payment system that is widely used in the Central Asian state. 

Elsewhere in the Caucasus, Armenia has one billionaire – Ruben Vardanyan (and family), who is currently in custody in Azerbaijan, which had no listed billionaires of its own in the Forbes rankings.  

Concerning Central Asia, six individuals in Kazakhstan made the Forbes list, while, officially at least, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan did not have a ranked billionaire. But some individuals in the region may be keeping their true net worth under wraps. Suspicions about the existence of secret billionaires whose fortunes may be entwined in corrupt practices were stoked by comments made in late 2024 by Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov, who seemingly inadvertently let slip that Kyrgyzstan has “five or six dollar” billionaires.