Crimes|The Court of Appeal increased the unconditional prison sentence of a municipal official from Vehmaa. In addition, his adult children received judgments for assistance.
Court of Appeal of Turku has increased the prison sentence of Vehmaa’s powerful man for abuse of a position of trust. The Court of Appeal ordered the municipality’s multiple voice rake and former municipal influencer Antero Ahalan to one year of unconditional imprisonment. The District Court of Varsinais-Suomen had sentenced the man to ten months of unconditional imprisonment.
The Court of Appeal convicted Ahala’s three adult children of aiding and abetting abuse of a position of trust. They received fines. District court rejected children’s charges in February 2023.
The verdicts are related to a foundation founded by two brothers without a family. The purpose of the foundation, which started operating in 2014, was to support lonely elderly people in the Lokalahti and Kalanni areas. Today, these former municipalities belong to Uusinekaupunki.
Antero Ahala worked for the brothers who founded the foundation from the 1980s. Born in 1950, Ahala worked as an accountant before retiring.
The first of the brothers died in 2015. His share of the brothers’ property was transferred to the foundation.
Ahala later served as chairman of the board of the foundation. He told the district court that he visited his surviving brother several times a week. Ahala took the old man on long car trips every week.
The over 90-year-old man changed his will in 2016. Instead of the property being transferred to the trust, it was assigned to Ahala’s three children in the will. The man died in 2018.
Foundation the board dealt with the will issue after the death of the founding brother in 2018. The board decided not to censure the will. Ahala and her spouse sat on the board of the foundation.
The bequeathed property included half shares of five properties and more than 60,000 euros. In the will, it was directed that Ahala’s children redeem the half shares of the properties from the foundation with the money in question.
The foundation decided to sell its share of the properties to Ahala’s three children. According to the taxman’s estimate, the value of the foundation’s share was around 140,000 euros. Ahala’s children paid only 64,000 euros for the share.
The Patent and Registration Board (PRH), which oversees the operations of foundations, became interested in the foundation’s operations in 2018. According to the PRH, the board members deviated from the purpose and forms of operation stipulated in the foundation’s rules and violated the provisions of the Foundation Act regarding reporting of related party activities.
PRH also submitted an application to the district court of Varsinais-Suomen to dismiss the board. Antero Ahala himself resigned from the board of the foundation.
In 2019, PRH asked the police to find out whether the members of the board have committed crimes.
According to the district court, Ahala knew that she was disabled when she participated in the decision-making regarding the will. The foundation lost almost 70,000 euros because of his and his spouse’s activities.
“The reprehensibility of the crime is increased by the fact that the motive of the act has been to obtain a benefit for the related parties,” the district court’s judgment wrote.
During the following three years, Ahala’s children received almost 190,000 euros in income from the sale of wood from the properties. The prosecutor sought a verdict for them for the crime of money laundering and, secondarily, for aiding and abetting the abuse of a position of trust.
According to the district court, the children knew that they had received the property at an underpriced price. However, according to the court, the children did not commit a crime, as the underpriced property transferred in the transaction was not acquired in a criminal manner at the time of the transaction.
One of the judges in the case filed a dissenting opinion. According to him, the children were guilty of abusing a position of trust in providing assistance.
District court sentenced Antero Ahala to unconditional imprisonment and Ahala’s spouse, who also worked in the foundation, to conditional imprisonment. They appealed the verdict to the Court of Appeal. The prosecutor and the foundation also filed a complaint.
The Court of Appeal gave its verdict in the case on the first of June.
According to the verdict, Ahala’s children must have understood that their parents were involved in the foundation’s operations, and that Antero Ahala played a central role in the execution of the will. The children claimed that they did not know about their parents’ participation as they were hindered in the foundation’s decision-making.
The children made forest deals with the forest company before they bought half shares of the properties from the foundation. According to the court, this shows that the children knew when they bought the half shares from the foundations that their value was significantly higher than the purchase price.
The foundation suffered a significant financial loss from the underpriced transaction.
The children must have understood that their parents were not monitoring the trust’s interest in the underpriced transaction. They therefore promoted the unjust act of their parents with their own actions.
Court of Appeal increased Antero Ahala’s unconditional prison sentence by two months. The man’s previous crime was the basis for increasing the sentence.
Antero Ahala served for a long time in Vehmaa’s municipal council and as its chairman. He was elected to the council in the 1995 municipal elections from the Vehmalaan alternative list. His number of votes was the highest in the entire municipality. Ahala was also a voice rake in subsequent municipal elections.
Ahala has been convicted of several financial crimes in 2006 and 2009, among others. He resigned from the municipal council in 1995 after being convicted of tax fraud.
In 2004, he was elected chairman of the council. He left the position after the district court convicted him of accounting crime.
The Court of Appeal reduced Ahala’s spouse’s conditional prison sentence by two months to five months. According to the court, his role in the foundation was significantly smaller than that of Antero Ahala.
The Court of Appeal sentenced three adult children to substantial fines.
The court ordered all five convicts to compensate the foundation for the damage of around 80,000 euros, including default interest.
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