MfD: Whistleblower unveils dubious deals, leaves ministry

Prague, Aug 15 (CTK) - Jakub Klouzal resigned as Czech Foreign Ministry's section head and finally had to leave the ministry after unveiling its overpriced IT orders in which the state lost tens of millions of crowns, daily Mlada fronta Dnes (MfD) writes Wednesday.

Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg (TOP 09) admitted for MfD that "things happened at his ministry that should not have happened."

The state is incapable of fighting corruption effectively, Schwarzenberg said.

Klouzal has documents clearly proving that the ministry spent 60 million crowns more than needed on IT management at Czech embassies, MfD writes.

In summer 2010, Klouzal informed Schwarzenberg about his suspicions. Considering the information serious, Schwarzenberg had it checked by the minister's inspection. The inspectors submitted four proposals for the police to enquire into suspicious deals, but the police shelved all.

"To tell the truth, I'm rather unhappy about it. I hoped the police will complete the investigation. I was shocked at seeing the police shelving the case," Schwarzenberg told the paper.

Klouzal said the minister's inspection had not provided complete background documents to the police. "Schwarzenberg's subordinate [inspectors] never took a part of the original documents over from me," he is quoted as saying.

Klouzal is the only person to be punished. After it turned out that he "informed against" his colleagues and "thwarted the business" of big IT companies, he received threatening messages and was subjected to audits initiated by his superiors. Last summer, Klouzal resigned as the section head. Since he disagreed with being given a position he was not trained for, he was sacked from the ministry, MfD writes.

It says Klouzal unveiled the overpriced IT deal and many other suspicious orders, overpriced or clearly redundant, in 2007-2009 when Schwarzenberg served his first term as foreign minister. Most of the dubious deals were masterminded by Vit Lidinsky, whom Schwarzenberg admitted as the new head of the ministry's IT section.

Klouzal tried to thwart Lidinsky's suspicious plans and he partly succeeded. It was also owing to Klouzal that Lidinsky lost the confidence of Jan Kohout, the new foreign minister from May 2009, and was forced to leave the ministry.

However, his colleagues "willingly" continued in the sophisticated system of overpricing orders. This made Klouzal discuss the issue with Schwarzenberg, who returned to the ministry's helm in mid-2010, MfD writes.