Belgrade -A Slovenian court on Monday dismissed a corruption case against opposition leader and former prime minister Janez Jansa due to a 10-year statute of limitations.
The District Court of Ljubljana ruled that the justice system ran out of time to pass a verdict in the decade-old case against conservative Democratic Party leader Jansa and two co-defendants.
Jansa, 56, was convicted in 2013 for taking bribes prior to Slovenia’s 2006 purchase of 135 armoured personnel carriers from the Finnish company Patria for 278 million euros (310 million dollars).
He had insisted on his innocence in the corruption case from the beginning, claiming that the alleged bribes he took in 2005 were orchestrated against him by political foes.
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The former premier was sentenced to two years in prison but was first placed behind bars in June 2014 after running out of appeals and making other legal manoeuvres
Slovenia’s Constitutional Court quashed the guilty verdict in April on grounds of insufficient evidence and ordered a retrial.
Jansa, who served as prime minister from 2004 to 2008, won a second term in 2012 but was forced to resign less than a year later after an official report alleged that he failed to declare all his assets(dpa/NAN)
