Ex-minister Svoboda gets five years for fraud

Former finance minister Ivo Svoboda has been sentenced to five years in prison for fraud while he was an executive at a pram-making company which subsequently collapsed. His co-defendant Barbora Snopkova was given a five-and-a-half-year sentence by the Central Bohemian Regional Court on Wednesday. Mr Svoboda served as finance minister from March 1997 to April 1999 in the minority Social Democrat government led by Milos Zeman.