Georgian police detained the son-in-law of ousted President Eduard Shevardnadze as he prepared to fly abroad on Friday, the boldest move yet in an anti-corruption drive by the ex-Soviet state's new leadership.
Following Gia Dzhokhtaberi- dze's detention on suspicion of tax evasion, his wife - Shevardnadze's daughter Manana - said her family might seek political exile abroad and she criticised her husband's detention.
"It's a lie. It's illegal and unprecedented. It's political persecution of Shevardnadze's family aimed at discrediting Eduard Shevardnadze," she told journalists.
The high-profile move followed pledges by President Mikhail Saakashvili - the 36-year-old US-trained lawyer who led street protests that toppled Shevardnadze last November and went on to win an election by a landslide - to crack down on corruption among leading figures in the country.
But Saakashvili, who leaves on an official visit to the United States on Monday, quickly gave assurances that Shevardnadze - once highly popular in the West as a Soviet foreign minister who helped oversee the end of the Cold War - would himself not be touched.
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