10-month prison

Ex-deputy PM Polancec to start serving his jail term on Monday

13.10.2012 u 12:48

Bionic
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Former Croatian Deputy Prime Minister Damir Polancec is expected on Monday, 15 October, to start serving his 10-month prison sentence he was given for paying Vukovar lawyer Petar Miletic HRK 500,000 from state funds for an unnecessary expert study, according to Polancec's lawyer Anto Nobilo.

Polancec will head to the Remetinec prison after he attends a hearing in the Spice (Podravka fraud) case at the Zagreb County Court on Monday , as the court order (on his prison term) does not specify when exactly he should report to the prison, Nobilo told the press.

After being notified in late July that he must report to prison on August 13, Polancec requested the judge in charge that the sentence be postponed for three months because his health had deteriorated. In the meantime, the judge requested additional medical records, and after that he decided to shift the beginning of Polancec's imprisonment for two months.

It is unknown to which correctional facility Polancec will be sent after his admission to Remetinec but he is likely to be incarcerated in a low-security facility and to be allowed to go to work and spend weekends out, given that his prison term is shorter than one year.

In October 2010, the Zagreb County Court sentenced him to 15 months' imprisonment for commissioning the study from Miletic, but the Supreme Court reduced the sentence by five months, while Miletic's sentence was reduced from 12 to eight months' imprisonment.

During the trial, Polancec denied all the charges, claiming he had been working for the benefit of the state and at the urging of former PM Ivo Sanader, who he said had requested that an "important political issue be solved with as little money as possible." Polancec said he had paid Miletic HRK 500,000 in compensation for earnings the lawyer had lost when disgruntled Serb workers of the Borovo company in Vukovar had dropped lawsuits filed because they had not been paid severance packages and because their years of service during the Serbian occupation of the eastern Croatian town had not been included.

The mitigating circumstance found by the Supreme Court for the reduction of Polancec's sentence was that the motive for his breach of law was his attempt to help solve the status of "Borovo" factory workers of Serb origin.

Polancec insists that his punishment is unjust and he hopes the Constitutional Court will grant his complaint against the lawfulness of the 10-month sentence.

In late 2011, Polancec was given, according to the Supreme Court's judgement, the suspended sentence of one year in prison with four years' probation for financial wrongdoing relating to the installation of floodlights at the football ground in his native village of Djelekovci, northern Croatia.

Polancec and several other defendants are standing trial for allegations that they defrauded the Koprivinica-based Podravka food company of HRK 400 million.