Prague, July 21 (CTK) – The defence lawyers of Czech lobbyist Marek Dalik, who was sentenced to four years in prison for corruption accompanying a military contract, have filed a petition for an appellate review with the Supreme Court, the Neovlivni.cz server has reported and his lawyer confirmed yesterday.
“We have prepared a petition for an appellate review and sent it to the Supreme Court. However, I cannot release details from it without my client’s consent,” defence lawyer Tomas Sokol said.
Dalik’s defence argues that the court assessed the submitted evidence wrongly and was not able to agree on what exactly Dalik committed, the server wrote.
According to the indictment, Dalik, former close aide to prime minister Mirek Topolanek (Civic Democrats (ODS), demanded 18 million euros for the continuation of the purchase of the Pandur armoured personnel carriers (APCs) for the Czech military from the Austrian firm Steyr.
The Prague High Court issued a valid verdict in the Dalik case in May, almost two years after trial began.
The appeals high court lowered the original five-year prison sentence to four years. However, Dalik must pay a four-million-crown penalty or he will spend two more years in prison.
Dalik pleads not guilty.
Now, he is waiting for the court’s information when he must start serving his prison sentence.
The Czech police started dealing with the case based on the testimony of former Steyr employee Stephan Szcuecs.
He said in March 2011 that Dalik had asked for the bribe at an informal meeting in a Prague restaurant in November 2007, pretending having close ties with representatives of the Czech government and being able to influence their decision-making and the order alone. This was not true, the state attorney said.
The purchase of Pandurs for 20.8 billion crowns was approved by the left-wing government of Jiri Paroubek (Social Democrats, CSSD) in 2006. At the end of 2007, Topolanek’s government said Steyr had violated the conditions of the purchase and it withdrew from it. In 2008 Topolanek’s government put up a new tender, within which the Czech army bought 107 Pandurs for 14.4 billion crowns in 2009.
($1=24.532 crowns)
