KB manager receives suspended sentence over fraud

Prague, Sept 4 (CTK) - The Prague Municipal Court yesterday meted out a suspended sentence to Jirina Kaplanova, former head of the Komercni banka (KB) trade financing department, for complicity in credit frauds.

The court did not punish another four former KB clerks, though it found them guilty.

The case concerned dubious loans worth hundreds of million crowns the bank provided to companies of former Czech Football Association (CMFS) chairman Frantisek Chvalovsky in the late 1990s.

The verdict has not taken effect and the defence counsels will appeal it.

The prosecutor has enumerated the damage at almost 1.5 billion crowns.

According to the prosecutor, the five defendants were involved in concluding credit contracts in 1998-1999 with the firms connected with Chvalovsky. They failed to take into account the risky character of the deals on which the money was to be spent and the bad economic situation of the companies to which the bank had lent it.

Some of them had not been able to repay their previous obligations to KB and some only repaid them through further money from it.

According to the indictment, the clerks deliberately inserted false data into the documents when concluding the contracts, thus contributing to the incurred damage.

In 2006, Kaplanova was sentenced to five years in prison for a fraud in connection with dubious loans to Chvalovsky's companies.

However, the verdict was cancelled by an appeals court and the police had to lodge new charges.

Last June, Chvalovsky was sentenced to ten years in prison for credit frauds worth hundreds of million crowns. At that time, the court in Prague said Kaplanova and her accomplices had been involved in the fraud.

Kaplanova and another person are also being prosecuted over deals between KB and the Austrian B.C.L. Trading company of Barak Alon in which the bank lost billions of crowns. They are facing breach of trust in property administration charges.

($1 = 19.805 crowns)