Zoran Thaler
Zoran Thaler (born January 21, 1962 in Kranj , Yugoslavia , today Slovenia ) is a Slovenian politician .
Life
Thaler studied political science at the University of Ljubljana and at that time was a member of the Socialist Youth Association of Slovenia (ZSMS) , which was converted into the Liberal Democratic Party of Slovenia in 1990 . For this party he moved to the parliament of Slovenia, which at that time still belonged to the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, after the parliamentary elections in 1990 . He was initially Deputy Foreign Minister and from 1995 to 1997 he was Slovenia's Foreign Minister. He then held various positions in business, including managing director of the mobile communications provider Simobil from 2004 to 2006 . After the European elections in 2009 , he entered the European Parliament as a candidate for the Socialni Demokrati .
In March 2011 the British Sunday Times exposed the Cash-for-Laws affair . From 2010 onwards, journalists disguised as lobbyists for the newspaper had offered several MEPs large sums of money if they wanted to influence legislation in the European Parliament. Three parliamentarians responded, in addition to Thaler, Ernst Strasser (Austria, ÖVP ) and Adrian Severin (Romania, PSD ). Thaler brought in an amendment requested by the alleged lobbyists and requested that the agreed reward be transferred to a London account. After the reporters had revealed their true identity, Thaler asserted “he knew from the start that they were reporters and just wanted to see how things would go on”. On March 21, like Strasser the day before, he resigned as an EU parliamentarian. Two days later, the European Anti-Fraud Office launched an accelerated procedure against Thaler and the other two parliamentarians. At the end of January 2014, a Slovenian court sentenced Thaler to a prison term of 2½ years.
literature
- Zoran Thaler , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 50/1997 from December 1, 1997, in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely available)
Web links
- Short biographies of 2,009 elected Slovenian MEP (English)
- Short biography on the homepage of Socialni Demokratiei (Slovenian, with picture)
- Entry on Zoran Thaler in the Members' database of the European Parliament
Individual evidence
- ^ The Sunday Times , "I must be careful: there is a smell to lobbying," March 20, 2011
- ^ ORF : Strasser sees "campaign" against himself , March 21, 2011
- ^ Slovenian EU mandate also resigned , March 21, 2011
- ^ Lobbyists affair: EU fraud fighters investigate diepresse.com, March 23, 2011
- ↑ Ex-MEP to serve prison in 'cash-for-laws' scandal , EurActiv , February 3, 2014
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Thaler, Zoran |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Slovenian politician, MEP |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 21, 1962 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Kranj , Yugoslavia |