STA, 9 January 2020 - Actor and comedian Boris Kobal has been given a 15-month suspended sentence with a probation period of three years after pleading guilty to plagiarising an Italian play in early 2019.
Under the terms of the plea bargain, the prosecution proposed an eight-month suspended sentence for fraud and the same punishment for copyright violation. The Celje District court pronounced a combined 15-month sentence on Thursday.
The scandal broke out in January last year, when it transpired that a play which Kobal presented as his original work and even entered in a competition for the best original Slovenian comedy is essentially a remake of Italian comedy La Prova Generale by playwright Aldo Nicolaj.
The production at SLG Celje theatre was subsequently withdrawn and Kobal was sacked as director of Šentjakobsko Gledališče, a Ljubljana-based theatre promoting comedy.
Kobal also paid back a EUR 13,000 fee he had received for the play, which the court considered as an attenuating circumstance. He has expressed remorse about his actions.
