Since early 2000s, Kitovani has lived in Moscow from where he harshly criticized the Shevardnadze government on several occasions. In February 2002, he responded scandalously to the mysterious suicide of Nugzar Sajaia, Shevardnadze’s close ally and an influential Chairman of Georgia’s National Security Council, making allegations that Sajaia was a homosexual and had ordered the 2001 murder of journalist Giorgi Sanaia. Later that year, Kitovani accused Shevardnadze of being behind the 2002 assassination of Kakhi Asatiani, a businessman and former soccer star. He also upheld Russia’s claims that some 700 Chechen fighters had spent that winter in Georgia’s Pankisi Gorge. He further claimed that Russian General Gennady Shpigun, abducted and killed in Chechnya in 1999/2000, was in fact held captive and put to death in Pankisi, with the body then taken to southern Chechnya. Georgia dismissed all these claims, however.