Amnestie Václava Klause – část třetí

The Anticorruption Endowment (NFPK) has released the third part of a study containing basic facts and quotes from the rulings of selected courts and public prosecutors, concerning the application of Article II of the amnesty declared by Václav Klaus in 2013. This part brings you the rulings passed by the regional public prosecutors and courts in Brno and Hradec Králové.

The criminal activities of the prosecuted (and amnestied) defendants again runs the gamut including fraud, violation of binding rules of business conduct, breach of trust and the very serious offence of evading taxation, charges and similar compulsory payments. “On offer” is also a robbery case when a taxi cabman was stopped, physically assaulted and had his cab stolen. The financial loss stated by the said rulings exceeds 2.25 billion crowns; further damages in excess of 1.4 billion crowns were averted.

Among the accused (and amnestied) were the perpetrators of a plot striping the Trend and Mercia investment funds of billions of crowns. They conspired and were accessories to losses and disadvantageous trading caused to both funds with a harmful intention, at least according to prosecution. Profit from the business dealings went to companies whose personnel and assets were related to the management, statutory bodies and agents of the above-mentioned funds. The case was marked by strange circumstances: the Hradec Králové public prosecutor, who supervised the proceedings, resigned in 2000; the case investigator shot himself in the summer of the same year. Verdicts were passed in the case: a varying amount of persons were sent to jail for up to seven year, pending appeal. Courts also ordered the defendants to pay over 700 million crowns in compensation. The Prague High Court, endowed with appeals powers, repeatedly declared the verdicts null and void. One of the prosecuted persons narrowly “fitted” within the amnesty confines, when he returned to the Czech Republic, after years of being prosecuted as a fugitive, only to walk free on 17 December 2012, no longer being treated as a fugitive. He “caught the last train”, so to speak.

The rulings are redolent with an unprecedented incidence of mental disorders, suddenly manifested by the defendants. Prosecution of the “sick” was suspended and ultimately halted by the amnesty.

It should be noted that as indicated by the rulings, obtained from the regional and high courts and public prosecutors nationwide, the defendants whose prosecution was halted were thought to have caused damages amounting to at least 18.6 billion crowns, with additional damages to the tune of at least 3.4 billion crowns being averted. Damages were said to have been incurred on over 90,000 natural persons and hundreds of legal entities.

We must add, in conclusion, that the Anticorruption Endowment Board of Directors decided to release the full names of the prosecuted and amnestied persons wherever they could be asserted after the fact.

Enclosures – Ruling on the halting of criminal proceedings under Article II of President Václav Klaus’s amnesty, decreed on 1 January 2013 (in Czech only):

Please contact: Martin Soukenka, NFPK Analyst, e-mail: martin.soukenka@nfpk.cz