Győr Judgment Board – In the case of eleven defendants, including the first-degree defendant, the sentence previously imposed in the proceedings known as the university bribery case in Pécs was relieved on Tuesday, the spokesperson of the panel court informed MTI.
Tamás Ferenczy said that in the final decision, the panel of judges sentenced the former economic director of the university – the first defendant – to five years in prison for accepting bribes, continuing fraud, budget fraud and other crimes, reducing the original sentence by three years.
Of the other 26 defendants in the case, three more have been sentenced in the first instance to imprisonment, each of whom has been sentenced to two years by a panel court.
The Győr Tribunal had previously sentenced 11 accused persons to imprisonment, for 7 of them, the trial court reduced the probation period.
In addition, the Győr Judgment Board upheld the first-instance verdict. In the trial, the court reprimanded a further seven defendants and acquitted five defendants. The National Investigation Bureau (NNI) launched an investigation into a bribery case related to the university’s management in the spring of 2010, as it was suspected that the parties formed supplier and service contracts in exchange for money, causing more than one hundred million forints in damages.
According to the facts, the first defendant began his work as an economic director at a public institution in a difficult economic situation. Together with his deputy, they intended to change the difficult situation, but they did not have the necessary expertise and a sufficient number of people to use external professional help. The business manager, meanwhile, has decided to give some of his subordinates and himself extra income every month to pay for regular overtime and, in some cases, out-of-job work. To that end, it entered into contracts with a number of defendants and the companies in which they had an interest.
The contracts were unreal in several cases, not made at the time they were dated, and the subject matter of the contract did not cover reality.
With the exception of the tenth and eleventh defendants, none of the trustees performed their duties under the contract, yet payments were made.
The prosecutor’s office charged fourteen people with bribery. According to the indictment, in the public procurement procedures conducted by the university, the university’s employees unlawfully provided suppliers with additional information, including the subject, value and time of the procurement, which gave suppliers an advantage over competing companies because they offered a cheaper price.
Therefore, in return, money was paid to the university’s employees in proportion to the purchases made, which took over millions of forints, with some defendants sometimes falsifying private or public documents, budget fraud, and trading in influence.
According to the sentencing panel, the tribunal correctly established the facts underlying the offenses charged and correctly classified the offenses.
The appellate court did not consider the prosecutor’s appeal for aggravation to be well-founded, but upheld the defendants’ and defense counsel’s appeal for mitigation because a considerable amount of time had elapsed since the act was committed and it could not be attributed to the defendants.
The trial began in 2012 at the Pécs Tribunal, whose judges declared their bias at the time, so the Pécs Tribunal did not have any advice left that could be objective due to the working relationship with the university’s lecturers.
The case then went to the Győr Tribunal, where the lawsuit was dismissed in a decision in 2016 because the prosecutor’s office did not comply with a summons. However, the Győr Judgment Board annulled the decision, so the trial was restarted.
In the repeated proceedings, the court of Győr ruled on 17 May 2019 in the first instance.
MTI
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