The Court announced the affair will return to the first instance in court with a different composition of the judicial body. The decision concerns a fraud and bankruptcy affair.
One person was initially sentenced to a partially-suspended prison sentence and a fine in court. The appeals court then removed the suspended part of the sentence while upholding the rest of the sentence. However, in June 2019, a representative of the public prosecutor's office noted that that a judge was present at the appeals court verdict after having been a member of the deliberating chamber of a different ruling, which rejected the provisional release of the defendant in question. The judge's presence in both deliberating chambers constituted a violation of a March 1980 law on judicial organisation, which stipulates that a judge who was a member of a deliberating chamber on the release of a defendant may not then be a judge on the same affair.
The Court of Cassation judges ruled that the judge in question was present at both rulings in 2014, as well as the deliberating chamber in the same affair in 2011. Consequently, the rulings in 2014 are considered null and void due to the violation of the 1980 law, and the affair must return to the first instance.
