January 15, 2018
The special department of prosecutors dealing with white-collar crime is working on around 90 cases of bank crime with dozens of suspects, including many former top executives at the biggest banks, show figures obtained by the STA on January 15, 2018.
The Specialised State Prosecution is currently investigating 21 cases with a total of 87 suspects, 65 of whom worked at banks when the suspected crimes were committed.
Additionally, indictments in eleven cases have been filed involving 48 suspects, and about 50 cases are in the earliest phases of investigation.
In the majority of the cases, the prosecution suspects abuse of office, with the estimated damage going into hundreds of millions of euro.
The majority of the crimes investigated date to before the financial crisis and the bailout of banks in December 2013.
While most of the cases are yet to come to trial, several court procedures are ongoing.
These include two cases referring to Hypo Alpe Adria Bank, one over a EUR 22m scheme to conceal funds in tax havens and the other over the bank's dealing with bankrupt builder Vegrad.
In both cases some of the suspects pleaded guilty in exchange for milder sentencing.
A re-trial is also ongoing in which two former NLB executives, including CEO Draško Veselinovič, have been charged with abuse of office over a loan extended to a former aide to the prime minister.
One case is already final, after the Higher Court recently upheld a guilty verdict against former Boris Pesjak and Dušan Valenčič, the former executives of the now defunct Factor Banka.
They have been sentenced to 15 months in prison and slapped with a fine for abuse of office for granting the refinancing of a loan to a businessman on lenient terms detrimental to the bank.
Factor Banka is in the focus of another trial, which is ongoing at the Ljubljana District Court. Mojca Lampret Kričej, a department head, has already pleaded guilty to clearing a poorly secured loan of nearly a million euros, while four senior executives who pleaded not guilty will take the stand.
