The information about Rath’s release was confirmed to Novinkám on Thursday by his lawyer Roman Jelínek.
“The Brno Municipal Court decided on the release last week on Thursday, and the plaintiff kept the deadline for filing a complaint, which expired on Monday,” said Jelínek, adding that his client was therefore released the following day.
The lawyer also stated that Rath will continue to practice medicine. At the same time, he will once again return to the premises of the penitentiary, while working two-thirds of the time in Prague’s Pankráck prison, where he will undergo treatment.
Kottová from Rath’s case works in Motola, although she is serving a sentence
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According to ČTK information, he still works at the polyclinic in Hostivice in Central Bohemia. “The plan is simple, I have a lot of work ahead of me,” ČTK quoted Rath’s text message.
But Rath’s release does not have to mean the end of the case itself – an appeal to the Supreme Court is still on the table, and a constitutional complaint may also be in play.
The convicted former governor had to go back behind bars in January, where he previously served half of the original seven-year sentence from the first branch of the corruption case, because the court found him guilty of the second branch of the case last June, extending the previously imposed sentence by a year.
Rath was punished by the courts for accepting bribes and falsifying public contracts in the Central Bohemia region. The then governor was arrested by the police in May 2012 with a seven million dollar bribe in a wine box. The Prague High Court later recognized Rath’s guilt in the case of influencing the tenders for the reconstruction of the Buštěhrad castle in Kladno.
In this branch of the case, Rath received a seven-year prison sentence, a ten-million fine and a ban on activity, for negotiating an advantage in the awarding of a public contract and damaging the financial interests of the EU. He has paid about half of the amount so far.
Rath was attacked in prison by a drug addict, the judge said
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In the second branch of the case, the court extended Rath’s sentence by another year. According to the court panel, eight other indicted people and nine companies, including construction company Metrostav, also committed criminal activities related to healthcare contracts in the region.
In addition to Rath, the central trio of the case were the former director of the Kladno hospital Kateřina Kottová and her husband Petr Kott. According to the court, at the turn of 2011 and 2012, they arranged bribes for the manipulation of tenders in the Central Bohemia region for hundreds of millions of crowns. Courts also extended Kotto’s sentences to eight years in prison. The trio also received heavy fines.
The judgment in the second branch of the corruption case has now begun to be reviewed by the Supreme Court. The appeal was filed by Rath, Kateřina and Petr Kotto, the company Metrostav and the chief prosecutor Igor Stříž.
In prison, he attacked Rath with scissors. The court upheld the man’s sentence of 6.5 years in prison
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