Ljubljana Mayor to Stand Trial in EU Fraud Case

By , 27 Sep 2018, 10:20 AM Politics
Ljubljana Mayor Zoran Janković Ljubljana Mayor Zoran Janković ljubljana.si Photo: Uroš Hočevar

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STA, 26 September 2018 - Ljubljana Mayor Zoran Janković will have to stand trial over alleged EU funds fraud in the Stožice sports complex project after the indictment against him and eight co-defendants has become final. 

The Specialised State Prosecution Service confirmed for the STA on Wednesday that the court had rejected the appeals of the accused against the indictment.

In the indictment nine individuals were charged with several offences, including abuse of office or powers, fraud to the prejudice of European communities, deception in obtaining a loan or favours and forgery or destruction of documents. Janković is charged with abuse of office and fraud.

As the indictment was filed on 18 May this year, Janković's lawyer, Janez Koščak, commented that the prosecution was trying to split hairs.

Apart from Janković, one of the defendants is said to be Roman Jakić, a former defence minister in his former capacity as director of the city sport facilities manager Zavod Tivoli.

Unofficially, the indictment also targets Uroš Ogrin and Zlatko Sraka from Grep, the main contractor in the Stožice sports complex, and Samo Lozej, a former boss of the company operating Ljubljana's parking lots and markets, who in recent years has been serving as the CEO of the city's energy utility.

Other defendants unofficially include the city's sports officer Marko Kolenc and the Stožice sports park project manager Andrej Lavrič.

The defendants are accused to have signed an allegedly bogus EUR 1.8m contract for the lease of parking lots at the sports complex to make Grep a creditworthy company and allow it to get a EUR 50m loan from NLB. This in turn allowed the city to get EUR 9.4m subsidy from EU and national funds.

It will be six years, to the day, tomorrow since crime investigators first raided Janković's home and Town Hall in the case, followed by searches at other locations a year later.

The court warrant for a search against Janković in April 2015, posted on Janković's personal web site, was based on the suspicion that Janković assisted Ogrin and Sraka to commit the crime of deceit to get Grep loans from NLB and Factor Banka, and that he attached a fake proof of Grep's situation to the application for subsidies for the Stožice project.

This is a second indictment against the mayor to have become final after the one alleging that the mayor of demanding half a million euro from Gratel in March 2007 in exchange for which he allegedly granted the company the permission to dig roads to install optic cables.

Commenting on the case today, his lawyer Koščak assessed that pre-trail arraignments in the Stožice cases as well as the Gratel one would not be called for at least a few more months, because the files were quite extensive so it would take time for the judge to prepare.

Janković is subject to criminal proceedings in several other cases, but he has been acquitted of abuse of office over a real estate transaction in Serbia in his former capacity as CEO of retailer Mercator.

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