Aleš Kvapil, the mayor of Žabovřesky district, and Radovan Novotný, a former secretary of Brno-střed district, were arrested last week and put in custody.
Sono centrum. Source: brnensky.denik.cz
The reasons are not crystal clear, as the police doesn’t want to comment the case too early. According to local press, Kvapil was arrested minutes after he received a bribe of CZK 1,000,000 (€39,000) from a businessman who had been collaborating with the police. The bribery is supposed to be connected with building an extravagant facility called “Sono centrum” – but now we have to wait for further investigation.
Both politicians are members of right-wing Civic Democratic Party.
Update (8 p.m.): Aleš Kvapil left the mayor’s office and Civic Democrats anounced that he was no more their candidate to the chamber of deputies. I hope that is not the end of the case.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
While most of the readers of this blog (or most of Czech people, for that matter) see this case as sad news, I see this as a good one. As a Brazilian, I’m used to see this kind of thing happening in my home country all the time, but nothing happens to those politicians. So, the good thing I see in this note is:
1) The guy is arrested while investigation is being done (may sound trivial, but try to read some news from Brazil and you’ll see what I mean)
2) The businessman himself was collaborating with the police (ie: he is not used to pay bribes in his other projects)
3) I read somewhere else that it’s one of the biggest scandals involving mayors in more than 20 years (ie: it doesn’t happens too often)
4) I also read somewhere else that they both are being expelled from ODS (ie: the party isn’t trying to cover/hide the actions of their members)
That being said, I would add that this kind of thing happen from time to time everywhere in the world. The difference is in how we handle such cases.
Juca, I disaggree with your point #3. If you talk to people involved in local politics, you will soon find out that corruption is a major problem of our country. Simply put, it is a status quo with roots deep down in the structures of Czech politics.
A week ago, an insider published an article in magazine Lupa, discussing some shocking (well, not for me) dimensions of corruption in the IT business: http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=cs&ie=UTF-8&layout=1&eotf=1&u=http://www.lupa.cz/clanky/korupce-v-cesku/&sl=cs&tl=en – worth reading!
Of course, the case of the mayor of Žabovřesky may be a signal that no corruptionist is safe. I hope he is not the last one to be arrested.
I agree with Juca, I’m from Barcelona an bribes from bussiness men to majors were and, still are the every day bread for us.
I don’t have (obviously) any data to support my arguments, but you just should look at how the city have changed since the olimpyc games, were before people were living now they build hotels, if you walked on that area, you’ll see how many “banners” neightbours have put on them balconies to protests against the major,etc.My grandma lives nearby the beach, in an old apartment and they want to “kick” her out from there because a construction of a new technology area has been planed…
And this is just Barcelona!!Imagine the rest…Czech people, in my opinion, are too critics with themselves, and they only see them dirty clothes, which is good in my opinion because then they’ll improve.
Regards