Gulami and his wife were arrested in Denmark at the end of last summer. Gulami was extradited to Latvia this week, but there is currently no information about his wife’s extradition process.
On January 26, 2023, the Supreme Court (AT) left unchanged the Riga Regional Court’s May 14, 2021 verdict, which found Gulami and two other individuals guilty of embezzling a large shipment of cotton.
The appeals court sentenced Gulami to six years and four months in prison, his wife Valentina Gulami to five years in prison, and Larisa Karpenko to three years and two months in prison. However the police did not take Gulami, his wife, and Karpenko to prison because they could not be found at the time.
The court also decided to recover 9,094,238 euros from the defendants jointly and severally for the benefit of the injured company “Logistic-Ekspress”.
Three days before the Supreme Court’s decision, it became public knowledge that the police had urged the prosecutor’s office to charge Gulami and his wife in connection with another case of alleged fraud involving an Old Riga hotel.
The prosecutor’s office did not comment further on what further action will be taken regarding this criminal case.
Back in 2016, in another criminal case, former Riga Regional Court judge Iveta Bērziņa and businessman Gulami were sentenced to non-custodial sentences on bribery charges. Gulami was sentenced to one year in prison, suspended for one year and six months, and fined 9,250 euros for bribery. He was also banned from holding certain positions for one year as an additional punishment. Bērziņa was fined 11,100 euros for soliciting a bribe.