Bellinzona (Switzerland) - Five former senior managers of the Most-based MUS coal company were found guilty of fraud, money laundering and other charges today by a Swiss court in the case of the Czech company's suspicious 1999 privatization.
Antonin Kolacek was sentenced to four years and four months in prison, Marek Cmejla to four years, Jiri Divis to three years and ten months, Oldrich Klimecky to three years and one month and Petr Kraus to one year and four months, reported state-run Czech Television.
The sixth Czech defendant, former MUS part owner Lubos Mekota, died this March.
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Another defendant, Belgian national Jacques de Groote who served as executive director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB) from the 1970s to the 1990s, only received a fine.
Kraus and Kolacek, who were present in the courtroom, were arrested immediately after the ruling was announced.
The trial in Bellinzona started this May. The defendants may appeal to the Supreme Court of Switzerland.
"The Finance Ministry appreciates that the Swiss court ruled in favor of the prosecution and especially that it gave non-suspended sentences," said Czech Finance Ministry spokesman Ondrej Sramek. The Czech state seeks to obtain part of the defendants' funds frozen in Switzerland.
The state sold its 46 percent stake in MUS in 1999 to the Appian company, controlled by the defendants, for CZK 650 million (EUR 25.5 million).
A few years later it was revealed that the sale was grossly underpriced when Pavel Tykac bought a 50 percent stake in the same mining company for CZK 10 billion (EUR 390 million).
Czech police believe that the defendants illicitly channeled USD 150 million from MUS and eventually used the money to buy MUS shares and bribe senior state officials and politicians. As a result, the state lost more than CZK 1.6 billion (EUR 63 million), says the Czech prosecution.
The Swiss prosecution recently obtained some evidence from the Isle of Man, a British tax haven, and passed it to the Czech Finance Ministry earlier this week. The documents allegedly show that the defendants controlled MUS already in April 1998.
This new evidence is "another stone in the mosaic," said Czech state attorney Petr Sereda who prosecutes the MUS case in the Czech Republic.
MUS was founded in 1993 in a merger of several state-run mining companies.
