The issue is fixed!!!

I've went through the thread once again and checked DBD::mysql. On dev was 4.018 version, but on stg it was 3.x. After the update everything worked perfectly. I just cannot belive that I somehow (while checking) missed to notice this.

Thanks a lot for your help. It has been a tricky one for me, and, apart from learning the cause to this, I learned extra on utf8 difficulties.

Stepamil