The Slovenian Police, in cooperation with the law enforcement agencies of the Dominican Republic and the INTERPOL national bureau in Santo Domingo successfully concluded the search of the fugitive Robert Časar, for whom the Koper district court issued a red notice and a European arrest warrant. Časar was arrested on 26 of February 2015 in Santo Domingo and is currently in detention in Paris, France, from where he will be extradited to Slovenia. The extradition procedure is being conducted by the Ministry of Justice.
On 20 of March, the Koper district court issued an European arrest warrant and a red notice against Robert Časar on the grounds of a binding judgement due to continued offence of Abuse of Position or Rights under Art. 244, Par. 1 and 2 of the Criminal Code and the offence of Prohibited Acceptance of Gifts under Art. 247, Par. 1 thereof. He was sentenced to 5 years and 9 months of imprisonment. In order to avoid serving this sentence, the convict escaped. On 14 of March 2014, the court issued an order to appear. In accordance with this order, the convict was supposed be brought to the correctional facility Dob pri Mirni.
On the basis of the issued order, the Slovenian Police began with the intensive search of Robert Časar, which was then extended on the basis of the European arrest warrant and red notice.
On the basis of data collected from the foreign law enforcement agencies on supposed movement of the wanted person prior and after issuing the red notice, we sent the first request on 7. of April to NCB Interpol Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic to check, whether the person was in their country. We sent several subsequent requests but received no answer, so we asked the INTERPOL General Secretariat in Lyon for their assistance, which they provided, and gave us operational and logistical support when searching the convict.
Because of the good cooperation with the INTERPOL General Secretariat in Lyon, we received a notification already in December 2014 from Interpol Santo Domingo that they were successfully solving our requests for the verification of data. In the beginning of February 2015, they informed us that they recorded the entry of the wanted person to their country already in 2013 and that he was recorded as an alien with temporary residence in their country. A consistent correspondence was conducted with the Dominican law enforcement that is with Interpol Santo Domingo with the intention to arrest the wanted person. We were acquainted that they intended to expulse the wanted person, what they also did on 26 of February 2015. They notified us that the expulsion will be carried out from the Dominican Republic to France, so we notified the French authorities of the existence and validity of the European arrest warrant. The French law enforcement detained the wanted person on the 1st of March 2014, when he entered their territory. Časar will be in detention in France until he is taken over by the Slovenian law enforcement.
When searching for the fugitive Časar, the Slovenian Police cooperated with 30 INTERPOL member states. The NCB Ljubljana sent and received over 260 written requests and replies to and from foreign law enforcement agencies.
It has to be emphasized that we received remarkable assistance from INTERPOL General Secretariat, namely from the Command and Coordination Centre (that provides assistance to the member states; one of the heads of this centre is a Slovene police officer, seconded to Interpol) and from the Fugitive Investigative Support. The Federal Investigation Bureau of the United States of America also provided assistance, when searching the wanted person.