Mayor of Prešov Pavel Hagyari, who in May 2009 promoted a new fleet of buses by driving several journalists and other passengers in one of the vehicles through the centre of Prešov, will lose his driving licence for one year and will have to pay a fine of €300, the Supreme Court decided on Tuesday, July 19.
Hagyari didn't have a licence to drive the vehicle, with a capacity of around 30 seats, and the police at the time fined him the lowest possible amount. Hagyari, who is a lawyer, appealed to the Regional Court in Prešov, however. That court found him guilty of a misdemeanour, and the case eventually ended up at the Supreme Court, the TASR newswire wrote. The mayor, shortly after being fined, claimed that he had not acted deliberately, as he thought that the vehicle concerned was a minibus and not a so-called midi-bus. Hagyari also claimed that when the director of the local transport company told him that he needed a 'D Group' driving licence, he thought he said 'B Group'.
Source: TASR
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
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