President says phone calls statements case is scandalous

Prague, June 20 (CTK) - Czech President Vaclav Klaus said Monday the case in which a judge allowed a police gain phone calls statements of his closest aides and Constitutional Court chairman Pavel Rychetsky is scandalous.

"It is scandalous, it is unbelievable. I was expecting anything, but not that I will live in a society that is wiretapping and recording people," Klaus told journalists during an autograph session this afternoon.

Klaus was signing the book Festschrift for Vaclav Klaus, in which Czech and foreign personalities write about him on the occasion of his 70th birthday he marked on Sunday.

Klaus said wiretapping and recording people is proof of "an unhealthy and unfortunate" society.

"Hard steps must be taken against these people and I would also like very much a greater control of them," Klaus said.

Daily Mlada fronta Dnes (MfD) has written that police Marian Hudec from Varnsdorf, north Bohemia, was fraudulently gaining phone calls statements of Klaus's chancellor Jiri Weigl and secretary Ladislav Jakl, Rychetsky and some other people.

MfD wrote that Hudec was a member of a team that investigated the case of a man from Cameroon who organised fictitious marriages and was involved in people trafficking.

According to the paper, Hudec added the numbers of some prominent people and wrote to the judge that he does not know the owners of the mobile numbers, but that the numbers are definitely connected with the case. The judge then sanctioned access to the statements.

According to the police inspection's version, Hudec was working on order, MfD wrote and said sensitive data on whom and how often the high-placed people were calling could get into the hands of a private person or a firm.

The inspection is also investigating a version in which the ABL detective agency that was owned by ex-minister Vit Barta, informal leader of the junior government Public Affairs (VV), before he came to the government could play a role in the case, MfD wrote.

Barta dismissed any connection with the case, but MfD wrote that the phone calls statements of CEZ power company's manager Daniel Rous were handed to ABL.

Justice Minister Jiri Pospisil (Civic Democrats, ODS) said Monday he is considering filing a disciplinary complaint against the judge who allowed Hudec access to the phone statements.