According to the prosecutor’s office, the Public Law Department of the Somogy County Prosecutor’s Office filed a lawsuit in March 2022 with the Kaposvár Tribunal in order to return the ownership of the apartment of an elderly woman who was the victim of a crime, acquired in connection with the crime, to the victim.
The criminal proceedings, which took place as a precursor to the civil trial, were initiated because the defendants, living together as a married couple, gained the trust of an elderly, foreign victim living alone in the settlement of Somogy County years ago, the appeals prosecutor’s office detailed.
As explained, the perpetrators, taking advantage of the victim’s emotional attachment, first moved into the woman’s apartment, and then persuaded her to gift the property to the defendant’s minor child, one of the defendants in the civil lawsuit.
After acquiring ownership of the apartment in question, the defendants also persuaded the elderly woman to leave it for renovation, and then transported her to a property with a private garden on a nearby vineyard, where she was locked in a shed used as a tool room.
The court sentenced the defendants to imprisonment for the crime of violation of personal freedom.
In May 2023, the Kaposvár Court of First Instance, acting at first instance in the civil suit initiated by the prosecutor, granted the plaintiff’s claim and ordered the cancellation of the registered ownership right in favor of the defendant’s child, as well as the re-recording of the old woman’s ownership right in order to restore the state prior to the gift contract.
The legal representative of the minor defendant filed an appeal against the verdict, which was rejected by the Pécs Court of Appeals, and then the Court, acting on the appeal against this decision – in accordance with the motion of the General Prosecutor’s Office of Pécs – upheld the decision of the court.
With this, the judgment of the Kaposvár Court became final.
