Badri Patarkatsishvili, an influential media and financial tycoon, said he has left Georgia to avoid becoming engaged in the country’s internal political standoff between the authorities and opposition.

Speaking in an interview with Tbilisi-based Imedi television, which is co-owned by Patarkatsishvili and News Corporation, Patarkatsishvili said on March 5 that he has moved his businesses “from Georgia into the West.”

Speaking from London, he said that currently he is only running charitable projects in Georgia. In a previous interview, Patarkatsishvili said that Imedi TV is more of a charitable project than a business enterprise which aims to foster democracy and freedom of speech in Georgia.

Patarkatsishvili also said that he wants “to request that both the opposition and the authorities not engage my name in politics.”

Last year Patarkatsishvili sold one of his major assets in Georgia, the oil terminal in Kulevi on the Black Sea coast, to the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR).