Thursday, November 03, 2005

WARSAW (AFP) - Lew Rywin, the Polish co-producer of Steven Spielberg's blockbuster film "Schindler's List", went back to jail to serve a sentence for fraud in a corruption scandal that rocked post-Communist Poland, a court in Warsaw said.

Rywin was released in May for health reasons after serving one month of a two-year sentence for seeking a 17.5 million-dollar (14.6 million euro) bribe which implicated former prime minister Leszek Miller.

"Lew Rywin is in prison. The regional court in Warsaw ordered that he be incarcerated again," said a court spokesman, Wojciech Malek, cited by the PAP news agency.

Rywin was accused of having asked the media group Agora -- which publishes Poland's top selling Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper -- for the bribe on behalf of Miller's party, the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD).

In return, parliament would change Poland's media ownership laws in such a way as to allow Agora to acquire Polsat, a commercial television channel.

The affair was seen as contributing to the government's slump in popularity, which eventually led Miller to resign on May 2 and for the left to suffer defeat in legislative elections on September 25.

Rywin, 59, former president of Canal Plus Poland and co-producer of another hit film, the "Pianist" by Polish-born director Roman Polanski, pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Miller and his team were cleared of any wrongdoing.
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