 |
| Jaromír Ruda |
As the summer Deaflympics gets underway this week in Bulgaria, there are reports out of Slovakia that a former Winter Deaflympics is headed to jail. Two-and-a-half years ago we told you about the the cancelation of the games set Slovakia in a post
here. Reports came out that the head of the Slovak Deaflympic Committee, Jaromír Ruda, had run up bills that have not been paid and he had no stadium agreement in place. Now a Slovak court has found Ruda guilty of fraud and embezzlement, giving him to 13 years in prison, according to a SITA newswire report. An associate was sentenced to 16 months in prison. Ruda plans an appeal.
Ruda was given a large amount of money for the games (more than $2 million in U.S. currency which he used for other purposes. The process through the court system in Slovakia has been a long one for Ruda. He was given 13 years, then he appealed. The case was returned to the lower court about a year and a half ago. A second identical verdict was then issued and again challenged. The result was that Ruda's associate got his sentence reduced from 14 years to 16 months. But Ruda's legal problems are not over. He faces more charges that he deceived several private companies about plans to rebuild stadiums in two towns for ice hockey. They allege he took what amounted to more than $13 million U.S. dollars from the deal with a fake bank guarantee. On top of this, he took a sum totaling more than one million U.S. dollars from the national deaf sports federations to book hotels and such--and is accused of not using the money for which it was intended. Many deaf competitors arrived in Slovakia before finding out they had no where to stay and the sports facilities that were supposed to be used for the 17th Winter Deaflympics were not ready for the competitions.
