Rotnik was at the helm of TEŠ between April 2003 and November 2010, when the decision was made to construct a new, 600-megawatt generator, which was originally estimated at EUR 650m, but eventually ballooned to EUR 1.428bn (a structure known as Termoelektrarna Šoštanj SV blok 6, TEŠ6).
Finding himself under scrutiny because of the overpriced and non-transparent TEŠ6 generator project, he is now facing several indictments, according to media reports. The first among them has now become final.
It is however not directly related to the financing of the project, as Rotnik has been charged with stealing a document from FURS in 2013.
The former TEŠ director will be asked to enter his plea at Friday's pre-trial hearing, and if he pleads guilty and makes a deal with the prosecution, the procedure will be over. Otherwise, the case will go to the main trial.
Tax inspectors started checking Rotnik at the end of 2012, looking into his transactions between 1 January 2007 and 31 December 2011. Allegedly, he stole a document in which he had reported his assets, noting that he had EUR 3.3m in cash in a bank safe.
Rotnik is being charged with trying to deceive tax inspectors in tax assessment, and of later trying to hamper the process in which the authorities tried to prove that he had gained some of his assets illegally, which he himself has been denying.
According to FURS, Rotnik had EUR 3.9m in assets the origin of which he could not account for, and was ordered to pay EUR 1.6m in tax for these assets. But Rotnik said a few years ago that the money could not be collected because he did not have it.
The matter was taken to court, with the Administrative Court confirming the findings from FURS last year and ordering Rotnik to pay the tax.
At the time, he was the director of a public utility company in Velenje and the court's ruling cost him his job. Rotnik paid the ordered amount of tax this year.
This case is however only a fraction of the ongoing investigations related to TEŠ6, as the prosecution also filed with the Celje District Court in 2014 a request for investigation of ten individuals and two companies over suspicion of abuse of office or destruction of business documents.
Rotnik was already arrested and detained in November 2014 together with the former head of the Medvešek Pušnik brokerage, Bogdan Pušnik, as part of extensive house searches.
He left the detention on 24 December 2014, when the Supreme Court ruled that the decision on detention was unlawful. Rotnik was suspected then of money laundering, as he allegedly attempted to clean illegally gained money by making a deal with Pušnik on a fake loan contract.
The specialised prosecution service is also investigating the supply of technological equipment for TEŠ6 (alleged damage of EUR 250m), reconstruction of the boiler of an old generator (EUR 360,000 in damage) and supply of a measuring and analytical system for generators 4 and 5 (EUR 280,000 in damage).
According to a report by commercial broadcaster POP TV, investigations have shown that the TEŠ6 project was overpriced by half a billion euro. Rotnik has admitted that the project was overpriced, but he puts the blame for this on his successors.
Being interviewed by a parliamentary inquiry commission, he said that the project had been managed transparently and economically, and added that all superiors had been informed about all details of the project.
But the police have unofficially confirmed that the new generator is too large considering the deposits of coal in the nearby Velenje mine. The seized electronic messages show that TEŠ managers manipulated the data showing that a smaller and cheaper generator could have been built.
Information from Switzerland has reportedly confirmed the suspicion that the French contractor Alstom had spent EUR 3m on bribes in Slovenia, with former TEŠ directors receiving at least EUR 870,000 in unlawful fees in total.
According to the president of the Celje District Court Matevž Žugelj, this is one of the most complex cases the court has ever dealt with. "We have to dedicate one full office to store the documentation, which currently features 59,121 documents in 151 files."
