Prague Castle on April 29, 2020 at sunset.
Prague – The President's office has filed a notified criminal complaint due to suspicion of property and economic crime in the Prague Castle Administration (SPH). Castle lawyer Marek Nespala told ČTK. It was delivered to the High Prosecutor's Office in Prague. According to Nespala, its content is identical to what the Office of the President of the Republic published on Monday.
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The castle said on Monday that today, based on an external audit in the Prague Castle Administration, it will file a criminal complaint due to suspicion of property and economic crime. The suspicions relate to the violation of regulations on the rules of economic competition, misrepresentation of data on the state of the economy, breach of duty in the management of someone else's property, theft, embezzlement or fraud. This is, for example, the theft of alcohol or toilet fees. The office mentioned some misconduct for which, according to it, the former director of SPH Ivo Velíšek and the former director of the Lány Castle Department Michaela Javůrková are responsible. According to Chancellor Vratislav Mynár, the number of responsible persons may be higher. Velíšek and Javůrková did not want to comment on the matter, they want to wait for the progress of the authorities in criminal proceedings.
The SAO conducted a comprehensive inspection of the Castle last year from March to September, the final report of which is not yet available to the presidential office. According to the Castle, the partial results of the SAO inspection prompted Mynář to recall Velíšek in October and commission an additional external audit, prepared by the company BDO, and the preparation of accompanying internal audits.
According to the KPR, the suspicions relate to the reconstruction of the vicarage or the alcohol records in the warehouse. “After the recall of Velíšek and Javůrková, the alcohol warehouse at the Lány castle was found almost empty and a high shortage was noted,” the press release states. Fictitiously, according to the report, 20 bottles of alcohol per month were to be written off for protocol purposes. According to Nespala, the damage was almost 110,000 crowns.
The company conducted the audit from December 22 last year to January 27 this year. “The work included an assessment of compliance with legal regulations and an assessment of the setting and functioning of related processes. A total of 15 findings were made, including three findings of high severity and seven findings of moderate severity,” KPR said.
In the case of repairs and construction modifications in Vikářské Street, according to her, Velíšek, among other things, in gross violation of the Public Procurement Act, did not cancel the tender procedure when only one bidder applied for the procedure, an economic discrepancy between the technical survey and reality was detected, and a discrepancy between the bid price and the expected value of the contract was also detected. According to Nespala's statement on Monday, it could have been an increase in the contract by almost up to 100 million crowns.
According to the KPR pod Velíšek, the records during the withdrawal and collection of cash in the Castle area were also insufficient, according to Nespala, it was cash from public toilets. “In summary, these are large sums of cash, the records of which were left completely inadequate by the former director of SPH Velíšek, from receipt, collection, to transportation, accounting and storage,” reports KPR.
