Court confirms Czech businessman Pitr's fraud sentence

Prague, Sept 7 (CTK) - The Prague High Court Friday upheld a three-year prison sentence for businessman Tomas Pitr for having fraudulently taken the shares of the food companies Setuza and Milo Surovarny away from the company Agrocredit.

The verdict covers one tax delict from 1994.

However, Pitr will not spend the three years in prison, as he spent over two years in custody.

A court ruled earlier that along with Michal Zouhar, Pitr took the shares away from Agrocredit in 2000, causing it the damage of over 700 million crowns.

Pitr thus committed a breach of trust and Zouhar was an accomplice, the court said.

The appeals court only re-examined the length of the punishment.

Pitr was already found guilty in 2010. At that time, he was imposed a six-year prison sentence, in which previous delicts had been included. They were committed along with Miroslav Provod and caused the damage worth over 20 million crowns .

However, as the verdict was cancelled and the proceedings were reopened, the court had to revoke the summary punishment as well.

In the reopened proceedings, both Pitr and Provod were released from the charges, but the decision was appealed by the state attorney.

Pitr was in hiding abroad from 2007. In July 2010 he was arrested in Switzerland. He was brought to the Czech Republic this April and taken into custody.