Court raises sentence for former ČSSD MP

Olomouc, North Moravia, Oct 16 (CTK) - The High Court in Olomouc yesterday raised the sentence for Petr Wolf, Czech Social Democrat (CSSD) ex-MP, for fraud from five to six years and tightened the sentence for his wife from two-years with a four-year probation to three-years with a five-year probation.

The appeals court also increased the financial penalty for both of them from one to five million crowns for Wolf and from 200,000 to one million crowns for his wife.

The court also banned Wolf from working in statutory bodies and business companies for eight years and his wife for four years.

The court complied with the appeal of the state attorney who demanded stricter punishment for the Wolfs and dismissed the appeal of the Wolfs who demanded release from charges.

According to the indictment, Wolf and later also his wife cheated the Environment Ministry from which they received 11 million crowns in subsidies for their projects in 2005-07.

The money went to their firm UT 2002 within the programme in support of science and research for two projects focusing on nature and landscape protection and on waste handling.

However, they gained the money on the basis of imprecise, distorted and false information, according to the indictment.

Wolf said in the applications Moravian-Silesian and Polish universities will participate in the projects, but he did not address any of them.

Some of the experts he mentioned in the application as his collaborators rejected any cooperation with him, others cooperated only marginally and some did not know about it at all.

The Wolfs were also convicted of cheating in handling the money entrusted to them and of falsifying accounting. They allegedly paid costs for holidays and foreign trips that were not connected with the research at all. They paid hundreds of thousands of crowns for consultancy to a firm that does not exist and their cars covered absurdly many kilometres in two years.

Wolf, former CSSD Chamber of Deputies MP, who later became loyal to the government of prime minister Mirek Topolanek (Civic Democrats, ODS), faced up to ten years in prison.

($1=19.219 crowns)