Former Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa has won damages for libel from Finnish television YLE over a 2008 report which accused him of bribery.
Mr Jansa demanded 1.5 million euros in compensation for a damning investigative report broadcast released just weeks before the Slovenian parliamentary elections which saw centre-left Social Democrats defeat over Mr Jansa’s Slovenian Democratic Party.
YLE journalist, Mr Magnus Beglund, alleged that Mr Jansa and several other Slovenian officials had accepted bribes in return for a 278 million euro contract to acquire armoured vehicles from a Finnish defence firm, Patria.
Ljubljana’s district court ordered YLE and Mr Beglund to pay Mr Jansa 15,000 euros ($19,800) in compensation. Mr Jansa was also awarded damages in the sum of 6,500 euros from former police commissioner, Mr Bojan Potocnik, who claimed that Mr Jansa had received bribes from a defence firm.
The court ruled that the information contained in the YLE report was insufficient to corroborate the bribe allegations. YLE and Mr Potocnik have been ordered to publicly withdraw their allegations on Slovenian and Finnish national television.
