Former bank head handed down 8.5 year sentence

The regional court in Ostrava, in the east of the country, has sentenced the former head of Moravia bank, Jiří Baron to 8.5 years in prison for loan fraud. The ruling toughens an earlier sentence, which was thrown out by the appeals court, by one year. In total, 17 people have been charged in the case for the alleged embezzlement of more than one billion crowns (the equivalent of around 49 million US dollars). Moravia bank went bankrupt in 1999; at the time it had around 9 billion crowns in its accounts.