ANKARA - Turkey's Supreme Court Friday sentenced a former energy minister to 20 months in jail in a high-profile corruption trial and then suspended the sentence, a report said.
The prosecution had sought 36 years in jail for Cumhur Ersumer on charges of abuse of power for rigging a series of public tenders.
The court found him guilty of exerting pressure in a tender in favour of the winning company, but suspended a 20-month jail term due to an understanding that the defendant would not repeat the offence, Anatolia news agency reported.
Ersumer was acquitted of 18 other charges and escaped without a verdict on the remaining two, which the court said fell under the scope of a 2000 amnesty law that pardoned certain crimes.
His successor Zeki Cakan, who stood trial on similar charges, was acquitted.
Both defendants were members of the center-right Motherland Party (ANAP), which was part of a coalition government between 1999 and 2002 led by late center-left prime minister Bulent Ecevit.
Cakan succeeded Ersumer in 2001 when the latter resigned amid a corruption scandal at his ministry.
They were among several ex-ministers that parliament sent to the Supreme Court -- the name under which the constitutional court judges top public officials -- after the Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power in 2002 with pledges to stamp out corruption.
The defendants had denounced the accusations as "political lynching."
The charges were brought after a parliamentary inquiry into claims of large-scale fraud in tenders, sell-offs, banking reforms and energy projects over the past decade that have reportedly cost Turkey billions of dollars.
The trial of three-time prime minister and ANAP leader Mesut Yilmaz and former economy minister Gunes Taner ended without a verdict last year after the court said the charges fell under the scope of the 2000 amnesty law.
Two other ministers have been acquitted and another two remain on trial.
The AKP, which was re-elected in legislative polls last Sunday, has come under fire for failing to address allegations of fraud among its own ranks, notably Finance Minister Kemal Unakitan.
The Supreme Court has tried 12 former ministers on different charges since 1928 and eight of them have been sentenced to either fines or prison terms.
07/27/2007 13:35 GMT