Maribor - The Maribor District Court has sentenced to jail an entrepreneur and two board members of the former Probanka bank over the latter's overpriced sale of shares to the entrepreneur in 2008. Each received a year and eight months in prison.

The main defendant, the Velenje-based entrepreneur Tomaž Ročnik, was found guilty of abuse of office or trust, while bankers Milana Lah and Peter Lobnik were found to be complicit. The ruling is not yet final.

In December 2008 Toming Consulting and Millcom Skupina, both led by Ročnik as director, bought from Probanka shares of NKBM bank at EUR 36 apiece, even though NKBM's stock market value was EUR 11 a share, according to the indictment.

By going through with this transaction, Ročnik helped Probanka gain more than EUR 3.1 million, the prosecution claims.

In delivering his verdict on Friday, judge Boštjan Polegek noted that in providing the loans to the two companies for this purchase, Probanka had paid out EUR 300,000 more than needed for the transaction.

The judge said it was obvious Ročnik had acted to the detriment of his companies, as Probanka signed no document to the effect of later buying back the NKBM shares.

The defendant's defence that a verbal agreement to this effect was in place was dismissed by the judge as yet more proof that the sole purpose of the transaction was to prop up Probanka's finances at the end of the year.

The actions committed by the defendants were illegal, among other things because contracts were being signed retroactively, the judge said.

The judge also said Ročnik himself had said his companies had no interest in buying the shares, meaning that the transaction was solely in Probanka's interest.

Specialised prosecutor Luka Moljk sought a two-year prison sentence for Ročnik, while the maximum penalty for this crime is eight years in prison.

The prosecutor took into consideration mitigating circumstances such as the fact that 14 years had passed since the transaction and that there is no indication that Ročnik had profited personally from the deal.

The prosecution proposed a year and seven months behind bars for Lah and a year and three months for Lobnik, but the judge decided they were equally responsible and gave them the same sentence.

The judge said the two bankers wanted to improve Probanka's finances and were aware that what they were doing was wrong. Lah and Lobnik meanwhile claim they were simply acting within their powers.

Before the ruling was delivered today, Lah told the court she felt tricked and that no member of the Probanka board had made financial gains at the expense of others. The bank regularly reported to the central bank and no anomalies had been detected.

She said that everybody believed the drop in the value of NKBM shares was only temporary and that nobody in the world imagined the extent of the financial crisis of 2008. Lah also said that verbal agreements were common practice.

"I have been punished for the past nine years for failing to forecast the future of the Slovenian banking system ... While Nobel Prize winners in economy only apologised to the English queen... I have been going from court to court for nine years and cannot get a job."

Three years ago, Lah and former Probanka CEO Romana Pajenk were found guilty of fraud, with Lah receiving a suspended sentence of a year and 11 months in prison. They appealed and the case is now being retried.