Reakce NFPK na vládní boj s korupcí

At a news conference today, the Anticorruption Endowment (NFPK) briefed the press about its views on the latest developments in the public sector. We believe that the more or less coordinated corruption activities have subsided only to give way to an appreciably more sophisticated style of controlled oligarchization of the country’s management. At the same time the NFPK presented a plan of action to challenge the new threats and outlined their ideas on how the Endowment wants to participate in this endeavour.

“When we worked to found the NFPK eight years ago, we were fighting against Messrs. Rittigs, Janoušeks and the political puppets on their string. In a way, these merchants of power, contracts and personnel shifts in state administration have been relegated to history,” Chairman of the NFPK Board of Trustees Karel Janeček noted. But he also warned of the current problems facing the Czech Republic: The present government echelon is only one of the products of the attempts to oligarchize the country’s administration. Their political, economic and media allegiances are towards the ruling group and on the first sign of disloyalty they will be expelled from the public life, smeared by the media or exposed to other existential problems.” NFPK Director Karel Škácha pointed out that the Endowment has long encountered concrete examples of deviation from the democratic mechanisms.

Government proclamations about fighting corruption, cronyism and other maladies sound largely formal. The new Plan of Action to Fight Corruption in 2019 may serve as a case in point. It does not provide any new weapons but merely repeats old clichés and promises analyses.

We presented the news conference with a strategy to combat “corruption in disguise”. “Because the government is not prepared or able to offer instruments with which to fight corruption, we will have to do it. Our first legislative proposal takes the form of a bill on the protection of whistleblowers,” Director Škácha explains the strategy. He also announced lawyer Ondřej Závodský’s arrival in the NFPK ranks a few days ago, in connection with the writing of new legislative proposals and challenging the government drafts. “Ondřejwas one our first awardees. We approached him mainly because we know his uncompromising stance on evil practices, be they corruption, economic crime in public administration, or hazard blown out of proportion,” Karel Janeček explains why Závodský is the right choice. Lawyer Závodský told the news conference why he has pooled resources with the NFPK: “After being expelled from state administration on the grounds of system redundancy, it was clear to me that my fifteen-year career in state administration had ended, under this government. But I’d like to help the country where I live and raise my children to assert democratic mechanisms so the freedom of each and every citizen is not curtailed by autocratic mechanisms, and the economy is not deformed for the good of certain corporations.”

In addition to the legislation in the pipeline, the NFPK will also focus on topical issues, such as attempts to influence the bodies participating in criminal proceedings, in particular independent courts and the effort to make certain media the mouthpiece of oligarchic administration. “We ask all citizens of this country, who suspect any of the above-mentioned unlawful actions, to share their suspicion with us in any possible way and we will try to help the truth to prevail and to send criminals behind bars,” Karel Škácha said, summing up the main mission of the Anticorruption Endowment.

The Anticorruption Endowment is a fully independent project, pursued by people radically unprepared to tolerate rampant corruption in state administration. One of our goals is to help expose corruption in state administration and support projects exposing corrupt conduct.

Contacts: Karel Škácha, Director, NFPK, tel.: 602 681 513, e-mail: karel.skacha@nfpk.cz