The opposition Movement of New Forces party leader, former Governor of Odessa Oblast (province) of Ukraine, and Georgia’s former President Mikheil Saakashvili, has criticized the Georgian court’s in absentia sentence against him.

“The ‘decision’ by a Georgian court, which is under the complete control of the largest private individual shareholder of Gazprom, Ivanishvili, regarding myself is completely illegal and contradicts all the relevant international and national legal norms as well as common sense,” Saakashvili commented on his Facebook page. “To judge a president for using his right to pardon, which I applied to 133 former military service personnel and which is not limited in any way, testifies to the completely political character of this process. This also demonstrates that the Georgian government has not been able to find, over the course of 5 years, anything of substance against me: not a single fact of corruption nor any other violations of the Law.”

In addition, the politician pledged to continue “the fight against corruption, the oligarchs and robbing the people.”

Georgian media had reported that former President Mikheil Saakashvili was found guilty of abusing his official position in his homeland.

And the capital Tbilisi City Court on Friday sentenced him—in absentia—to three years in prison, in connection with the case into the murder of a bank employee in 2006.