Русская версияAnother four suspects received suspended sentences and one was acquitted.
The state attorney had accused the 11 managers of causing damage worth 1.4 billion crowns to the funds.
The toughest sentence was received by Miroslav Halek, whom the plaintiff considers the head of the criminal group.
The convicts also have to pay compensation worth several hundreds of millions of crowns to the funds, and they have been banned from heading companies for three to ten years.
The suspects were found guilty of resorting to machinations to illegally siphon off the funds' most valuable shares in the mid-1990s.
The Trend and Mercia case is one of the largest cases of illegal siphoning off assets in Czech history.
The trial was preceded by nine years of investigation.
The criminal file has 20,000 pages and the criminal charges several hundreds.
The case was accompanied by complications, when a former detective in charge of the investigation committed suicide for unknown reasons in 2000 and a former state attorney dealing with the case resigned from the post in the same year.
(Ceske Noviny)
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