Brno, April 11 (CTK) – The Brno Municipal Court decided on the release of businessman Sharam Abdullah Zadeh, suspected of huge tax fraud and influencing witnesses, but the verdict has not taken effect yet and the prosecutor may appel against it, the public Czech Radio (CRo) writes on its website yesterday.
“The court has just decided that my client should be released because the reasons for his imprisonment are not valid anymore,” Zadeh’s media representative Jan Jetmar told CRo.
The prosecutor, the supervising state attorney Michal Galat, did not comment on the case.
There have been three reasons for Zadeh’s pre-trial detention: the dangers of escape, collusion and committing crime.
Jetmar said the court concluded that none of the reasons apply to the present situation of his client.
He said escape was no threat because Zadeh had been released on a bail of 150 million crowns more than one year ago and he did not flee. Collusion detention should have ended on March 3, Jetmar added.
The court declared that if Zadeh and his wife promise not to commit crime, there is no reason why they should not be released, Jetmar said.
Zadeh was arrested three years ago. Along with accomplices, he is suspected of tax evasion related to the imports of hundreds of millions of litres of fuel from Slovenia and Germany to the Czech Republic in 2012-2013. The police consider him the chief organiser of a 2.5 billion-crown fraud, in which 65 companies used false tax returns and stooges. Zadeh pleads innocent.
Zadeh spent 22 months in detention and he was released on a record-high bail, but in December 2016 he was detained again due to the suspicion that he tried to influence a witness.
Zadeh’s defence repeatedly complained about various steps taken by Czech authorities in the case. Zadeh claims that the police only abuse his case to create an illusion of an effective fight against tax evasion.
($1=25.082 crowns)
