Umožnil dopadení korupčníků přímo při převzetí úplatku
Mr. Martin Pecka is the owner of Auta Motol. He has spent many years selling automobiles, tackling problems big and small, and dealing with people of every hue and description. He encountered and solved almost anything, but a five-year-old episode keeps coming to mind.
It started as simple as that: In 2008 Mr. Pecka decided to extend the floor space of his car showroom, on his property. He had redeveloped many times before and now he knew he would need official stamps and permits galore. This time, however, he was stuck in his endeavour by the need to have clearance from the Prague Water Conservation Company (PVS). That triggered off a procession of would-be wise Alecs, self-styled advisors, problem messengers and parasites of every hue and description calling on him. “No matter how you call them, they will just tell you that your project won’t pass and you look in their faces and see what they mean…,” says Mr. Pecka.
One of those smart guys was a Mr. Vondra, who declared after the relevant documentation was submitted to the general supervisor of the Prague area project, PVS, that he knows about the clearance problem and is “the one who can solve it”. At a meeting that ensued, Mr. Vondra said that “these guys go by a certain tariff and take 10 % of the budget in return for an approval”. That projected into five million crowns down the pocket of a PVS official.
A problem had been created: somebody had pointed out alleged contamination of the Motolský potok stream on Mr. Pecka’s property, and someone said he would be granted a permission to build the moment he diverts the brook from the building site, or pays what is asked from him to pay. Mr. Pecka duly ordered an assessment of the stream’s environmental burden, had spent 300,000 crowns for a feasibility study on trans-locating the stream to Plzeňská Street underground, and, at an official meeting with other experts, he tendered his paper to official Krupička from PVS. But Mr. Krupička knew that his demand for rerouting the brook is stupid, but he was so self-assured he did not so much as open the documentation, presented to him, in the presence of his associates, merely stating he had “nothing to talk about”.
And he was right, since he again despatched his trusted colleague Vondra, to meet with Mr. Pecka; the latter declared that PVS, represented here by bureaucrat Krupička, would give the go ahead to the building effort, if Mr. Pecka pays. By that time, however, Mr. Pecka knew he would share the scenario. Mr. Pecka also knew he would share the prewritten script with the police, but managed to cut the asking price to 1,600,000 CZK.
The car showroom owner had long suspected the way things were, but it took Mr. Vondra to disclose how exactly things should evolve: “Vondra and Krupička were happily counting fat proceeds to be reaped for almost nothing to pay in reward when I contacted anticorruption police. I was pleased to discern a professional attitude to the issue. They at once knew what to do; while police technologies and cash were being prepared, I was bracing myself for the next couple of days with police officers prepared to flexibly react to the terms set by those corrupt elements,” Mr. Pecka reports.
In the event, Mr. Vondra traded in with Mr. Pecka a positive PVS affidavit by a bureaucrat named Krupička for a stack of police-marked banknotes, which act was recorded by a police video camera. Police arrested both men in the act of counting Mr. Krupička’s share of the booty. Now they are sitting, four years for taking bribe.
“I ain’t a cowboy but I would do the same again, without fear,” says an undaunted Pecka, and he adds:
“I have learned that one must not yield ground to corrupt people or give them room to work. I would pay once and galore would come for the booty!!! I owe my appreciation to professionals in the police ranks and trust that honesty pays.”
