Former Czech Foreign Minister Being Held In
A Costa Rican Jail
The Czech national, Karel Ponocny, will be
spending the next two months in a Costa
Rican jail after being detained by Costa
Rican officials earlier this week, wanted by
the Czech Finance Ministry for fraud
committed in that country.
Ponocny fled the Czech Republic sentenced
Ponocny in 2006, in absentia, as he had
already fled the country in 2004, ending up
in Costa Rica and obtaining his legal
residency by way of marriage to a Costa
Rican national.
Ponocny was detained on the basis of an
Interpol warrant of arrest in his apartment
in San José..
Ponocny, while Finance Minister Czech
Republic, was in charge of collection of
debts from abroad, among others from Peru.
However, the debt collected from Peru never
made it to the coffers of the government.
Ponocny and his accomplice, entrepreneur
Anton Murarik, masterminded a grand fraud.
Murarik's company took the reward for
collecting the money amounting to 95 percent
of the sum, while the ministry received the
remaining 5 percent, or 2.3 million crowns.
Most of the money ended up abroad.
Ponocny and Murarik were also fined one
million crowns each and they must cover the
damage of 43 million crowns, incurred by the
Czech Republic.
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