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Slovenian court orders retrial of former PM's corruption case

Xinhua, April 24, 2015 Adjust font size:

Slovenia's constitutional court quashed the guilty verdict against opposition leader Janez Jansa on Thursday, and ordered a retrial of the former prime minister and two other co-defendants' cases.

In its decisive ruling, the constitutional court ordered the three defendants' release on the grounds that the lower courts had failed to present facts that would conclusively show the defendants had made any illegal deal in the so-called Patria case in which Slovenian officials were suspected of accepting bribes from Finnish military equipment company, Patria.

Jansa, the leader of the largest opposition party, Democratic Party, served as Slovenian prime minister from 2004 to 2008.

He was found guilty of accepting the promise of a bribe as part of a 278-million-euro (about 300 million U.S. dollars) arms deal with Patria in 2006.

In June 2013, Jansa was sentenced by the local court here to two years in prison, and defendants Krkovic and Crnkovic to 22 months each. The first instance ruling was upheld by the higher court in April 2014.

Jansa denied the charges, labeling the verdict as "politically motivated." He claimed the prosecution had failed to produce a single piece of evidence against him. He also vowed to challenge the conviction all the way to the European Court of Human Rights. Endit