The court sentenced former Central Group manager Novotný to 8.5 years

Prague - For nearly two hundred million in tax evasion, the Prague Municipal Court today imposed an 8.5-year prison sentence on the former executive director of the development company Central Group, Aleš Novotný. He was also banned from serving on the statutory bodies of companies and cooperatives for ten years. The verdict is not final; Novotný denies his guilt and has appealed. The court sentenced his three co-defendants to prison terms ranging from 7.5 to 5.5 years. The last defendant was acquitted.
    "I would like to emphasize the leading position of the defendant Novotný; he is also connected to the highest share of the damages caused," explained the chairwoman of the court panel, Silvie Slepičková, as to why Novotný received the harshest sentence of all. According to the court, Novotný managed to reduce taxes by 163 million, and also attempted to evade an additional 20 million. He faced up to ten years in prison.
    Despite the length of the sentence, the judge decided not to classify him in the most severe type of prison but only in a prison with security. "Inclusion in a prison with increased security would not match his personality," she stated, recalling that the educated engineer had led a proper life thus far.
    Alongside the forty-year-old Novotný, the defendants included Luďek Jůza, manager of H.Q. Print and Duosprint companies, retiree Jaroslav Kukla, Brno entrepreneur Antonín Beránek, and sales manager of MPI - Marketing & Consulting, Andrii Gindriuk.
    The court sentenced Kukla, who allegedly facilitated contacts between Novotný and Jůza, to 7.5 years of imprisonment. Jůza received a sentence one year shorter, as he confessed to the crime and assisted in its uncovering. Beránek was sentenced to 5.5 years, while Gindriuk was acquitted of the charges. "It was not proven that the act was committed by the defendant," noted the judge.
    According to the verdict, Kukla is also to lose 6.5 million crowns from an account where, according to one of his testimonies, he stored proceeds from criminal activities. Jůza and Beránek received, like Novotný, a ten-year ban from serving in company management.
    Chairwoman Slepičková ordered a total of seventy main hearings during the lengthy case proceedings and reviewed invoices from Central Group related to a total of 600 million crowns. The actual pronouncement of the verdict today was delivered fluently and without interruption unusually long - 4.5 hours. She had to read data about each of the hundreds of invoices that Novotný and the other defendants were found to have fabricated according to the verdict. Contrary to usual practice, she allowed attendees to listen to the rest of the verdict while seated after the first hour, as one of the lay judges began to experience health issues due to the heat in the courtroom.
    The prosecution asserts that Novotný and the other defendants intentionally inserted hundreds of false invoices into Central Group's accounting from 2004 to 2010, which Novotný procured. The other defendants allegedly issued tax documents or facilitated their issuance. These were invoices for promotional or marketing services for Central Group that, however, were never rendered by the companies. The men allegedly reduced VAT and lowered the tax base for income tax calculation.
    Novotný, who is in custody, denied the charges in full. He previously stated that he only formally signed invoices that were deemed false by prosecutors and only served to lower the tax base. People from the relevant departments were supposed to check them. He claims he received up to a hundred invoices daily on his desk and could not review all of them.
    The appellate High Court in Prague will have to deal with today's verdict. Both Novotný and the lawyer for the absent Kukla appealed on the spot. The other defendants, except for the acquitted Gindriuk, took time to consider, as did the state prosecutor Jarmila Pavlová.
    Novotný's lawyer Lukáš Trojan will base his appeal on the assertion that the main hearing had significant procedural defects. He told journalists that not all evidence was properly conducted - the judge allegedly was pressed for time because the deadline after which Novotný would have to be released from custody was approaching.