Boj se slunečními mlýny

You might still recall the support the government gave at the start of the new millennium to solar power projects, designed to encourage owners of weekend cottages and country houses to acquire small, self-contained sources of solar electricity and to sell any surplus output to the national power grid. At that time the State guaranteed a very attractive electricity-purchase price—so attractive in fact that within the next three years, green fields began teeming with massive solar panel plantations and investors worked overtime to out-compete one another with construction projects. By 2009 the government was intent on curbing the undesirable expansion of giant photovoltaic parks and announced future cuts in electric power-purchasing prices. However, because of the government’s incompetence, the planned reductions were approved as recently as from 1 January 2011, the long-overdue action having been preceded in 2009-2010 by enormous pressures from investors on the panel builders and local governments to quickly obtain building licences and put solar power plants in place before the expiry of the state support scheme.

At about the same time, the firm ENERGOSUN a.s. also decided to quickly invest in the segment that offered fat profits, expeditiously outlined a project and worked hard to obtain a building licence. In early 2010 an application for permission to erect a photovoltaic plant in the Bílina urban cadastre landed on the table of Jan Bláha from the municipal construction department. But he repeatedly alerted his supervisor, head of the Bílina Construction Department Milan Vondráček, to many material shortcomings of that application, which did not contain approvals by the environmental department and the Bílina fire brigade, but chiefly manifesting the application’s discord with the Bílina territorial plan. In spite of the reservations, however, supervisor Vondráček pressurized his aide Bláha to present a positive verdict on the said application. Bláha found himself facing a difficult situation: he had orders from his superior, but he knew that by issuing a construction permit, he would have breached the law. In the event, he furnished his supervisor with an approval but refused to sign it. Consequently, Milan Vondráček (who was later prosecuted and sentenced) assumed responsibility and, in spite of all reservations and shortcomings concerning the half-billion-crown project, issued the required permission to start construction.

Vondráček had indicated to Bláha that if the project goes wrong he, Bláha, could end buried in a landfill. He immediately saw to it that Bláha is sacked due to a “restructuring” effort in the town hall. Braving oppression and the health problems ensuing from the affair, Bláha told the Czech Police all about the unlawful provision of permit to start building the Bílina photovoltaic.

Today, the solar plant is bringing fat and ensured profits to its owner, while the bold man Bláha has moved out from his job and domicile, but the former director of the construction department, Milan Vondráček, has been served with a verdict of the Prague Court of Appeals, which in late summer confirmed his seven-year jail sentence for abuse of official powers. Vondráček got away with corruption charges, but it is hard to believe that he had fought for the construction permit out of his sheer love for the investor.

The Anticorruption Endowment (NFPK) respects anyone who acts correctly on corruption affairs, acts in accordance with the law, and has the courage to expose shady dealings.