Oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili, seen as Georgia’s shadow leader, will donate more than $10 million to the national football team, which has surprisingly qualified for the round of 16 of Euro 2024, his political party announced on Thursday.
Players from this small Caucasian country beat Portugal 2-0 on Wednesday, a historic victory for their first international competition. The team, coached by French coach Willy Sagnol, will face one of the tournament favorites, Spain, three-time European champions, on Sunday.
Regardless of the outcome of the match, the ruling Georgian Dream party has already announced that its honorary chairman, Bidzina Ivanishvili, will award the team a prize of around $10.7 million.
If the footballers beat Spain, that sum will be doubled, the party added in a statement. Bidzina Ivanishvili, the richest man in the former Soviet republic, has been quietly presiding over Georgia’s destiny for a decade, even though he does not hold government office.
His fortune is estimated at $4.9 billion, almost a quarter of his country’s GDP. This 68-year-old was Prime Minister from 2012 to 2013 after founding the Georgian Dream party, which has taken a conservative and anti-Western turn in recent years. His critics accuse him of wanting to divert Georgia, an EU candidate, from its European path to bring it closer to Russia.
Georgia bonus 10 million euros 2024
