On Wednesday, Dr Anton Grizold, the former dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences and advisor to Robert Golob, the new face of the Slovenian left, and Bojko Bučar, Grizold’s successor at the same faculty, will appear before the court. The prosecution has also filed a lawsuit against Kučan’s personal friend Gabi Čačinovič Vogrinčič. All three are being tried due to the University of Ljubljana affair, as they paid standby allowances to employees of many member faculties of the university, such as the Faculty of Economics, the Faculty of Arts, and the Faculty of Social Work, where the first conviction has already happened. Grizold and Bučar are facing from three months to five years in prison.
The web portal Škandal24 writes that this year’s returnee to state politics, Robert Golob, who was once a member of the Positive Slovenia party (Pozitivna Slovenija), is also drawing other forgotten politicians out of the mud and into his circle. A few days ago, Dr Anton Grizold spoke with him at a press conference on security issues. Anton Grizold is a professor and former politician of the Liberal Democracy of Slovenia party (Liberalna demokracija Slovenije), who received 1,517 votes in the 2004 elections when he ran in the Novo Mesto constituency.
It should be noted that the documentation of the former State Security Administration of Yugoslavia, which was found in the Archives of Slovenia by researcher and publicist Igor Omerza, shows that Grizold had the code name Gane and the number 14000-05883, which, according to the State Security Administration records means that he was a source for the administration. After a failed political career, Grizold returned to the civil service at the Faculty of Social Sciences in Ljubljana, where he also served as the dean. And he did it in a way which brought him to this point – he has to appear before the court on the 23rd of March, along with his colleague Bojko Bučar.
They say that this is a criminal case, as the prosecutor Matija Hostnik is abusing the two of abusing their position, and Grizold and Bučar are facing from three months to five years in prison. Grizold and Bučan, former deans of the Faculty of Social Sciences, found themselves being tried in the University of Ljubljana scandal – the affair of all affairs, as they paid standby allowances to employees of many member faculties of the university, such as the Faculty of Economics, the Faculty of Arts, and the Faculty of Social Work, where the first conviction has already happened.
Namely, the Penal Code defines the abuse of official position or official rights as the event where an official or public servant who, in order to gain illegal property for himself or someone else, uses his official position or exceeds the limits of official rights or fails to perform official duties, which is punishable with imprisonment from three months to five years.
The Delo newspaper reports that former dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences (Fakulteta za družbene vede – FDV), Bučan, who is being accused by the prosecution of allegedly abusing his position in the affair in question, as he paid standby allowances, has already appeared before the Ljubljana District Court in February. According to the Slovenian Press Agency, Bučan has pleaded not guilty, and the lawsuit against Bučar’s predecessor, former dean Grizold, has meanwhile become time-barred. In this case, it is therefore not clear whether another case is pending against Grizold, which is not yet time-barred, as he has been summoned to court as a defendant.
The allowances were paid without the necessary legal basis
The prosecution is accusing Bučar of abusing his official position as the dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences in the period from October 2011 to September 2013, in order to gain illegal benefits for himself and others. He allegedly did so by issuing orders and decisions on “on-call time” for 24 faculty employees, for which he had no legal basis. According to the prosecution, Bučar knew that these payments were illegal, but he pursued the goal of increasing the salaries of employees, said District State Prosecutor Renata Vodnjov.
Bučar, who has now been retired for about two years, has argued that he inherited the payments of standby allowances from the former dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences, Grizold, but when he took office, no one warned him that there was anything wrong with the payments. He did not receive any such warning from his colleagues or the other deans of faculties of the University of Ljubljana, with whom they met on a monthly basis and discussed various issues, including standby allowances. When he took over as dean, the Faculty of Social Sciences was in an unenviable financial position, and colleagues warned him that they were entitled to allowances as civil servants, he said. According to the Slovenian Press Agency, Bučar also emphasised that the faculty’s standby allowances are not paid from public funds but from funds obtained by the faculty from marketing activities. Bučar also denied accusations of the prosecution that he allegedly also made sure that he himself got the standby allowance.
Allegedly, they also illegally paid allowances to themselves elsewhere
Prosecutor Hostnik also filed a lawsuit against Milan Kučan‘s confidante and former dean of the Faculty of Social Work, Gabi Čačinovič Vogrinčič, who was found guilty and given a suspended sentence of six months in prison. The payments that dripped into the accounts of civil servants between the years 2012 and 2015 had no legal basis, and the total amount of the illegally paid standby allowances at the University of Ljubljana amounted to as much as 780,943 euros, of which 63,632 euros went to the Faculty of Social Sciences.
Sara Kovač
