Badri Patarkatsishvili died in Surrey worth over $1 billion, a relative produced a copy of a will naming himself executor, and the widow called it a forgery in courts in five jurisdictions

Badri Patarkatsishvili founded Imedi TV in 2003. Riot police raided it in November 2007, and control passed to allies of President Mikheil Saakashvili. Living in exile, he came third in the January 2008 presidential election. He died late on 12 February 2008 at his Surrey estate, aged 52. Reports put his fortune at over $1 billion. He was buried in the courtyard of his Tbilisi residence, Arkadia. The next day his widow, Inna Gudavadze, signed an agreement with his partner Boris Berezovsky that half the assets were Berezovsky's. She later tried to annul it. His relative Joseph Kay produced an electronic copy of a 2007 will naming himself executor. It left 25 percent each to Gudavadze and to Olga Safonova, whom Patarkatsishvili had married in 1997, and 10 percent to each of three children. Gudavadze called the will forged. In August 2008 a Moscow court voided the Safonova marriage because the 1979 marriage to Gudavadze was never dissolved. A New York federal court rejected the copy without an original. Emanuel Zeltser, a lawyer named in the copy, was sentenced in Belarus in August 2008 to three years for using forged documents and pardoned in June 2009. Tbilisi courts recognised Kay as executor in 2009, and an English court refused to on 4 December 2009. The High Court in London later ruled the documents forgeries^†. Berezovsky dropped his $3 billion claim in September 2012, and Imedi returned to the family on 16 October 2012.