Ivan Maroš, a former financial manager of the SPP gas utility, has been sentenced to just over three years in prison for fraud relating the long-running and murky scandal of the so-called Ducký bills of the 1990s, the Sme daily reported on Friday, January 18.
On January 17 the Specialised Criminal Court sentenced Maroš to three years and two months in prison for falsifying economic and trade registration in the case of Ducký bills, a kind of promissory note, worth 350 million Czech crowns. The court heard three potential versions of his perceived intentions, and decided that Maroš wanted the money not for himself, but rather for SPP. The verdict is not effective until confirmed by the Supreme Court.
The so-called Ducký Bills of Exchange, amounting to Sk1.4 billion (now equivalent to approximately €46 million), were supposed to have been signed by Ján Ducký, a former director of SPP, who was shot and killed in front of his house in Bratislava in January, 1999. He served as economy minister in two governments under prime minister Vladimír Mečiar between 1992 and 1998.
Source: Sme
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
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