Organised crime group controlled Prague Public Transit since 2007, analyst says

Prague, Aug 20 (CTK) - An organised crime group operated in the Prague Public Transport Company (DPP) from 2007 and prepared contracts disadvantageous for it, according to a legal analysis by lawyer Vaclav Laska who told Czech Television (CT) yesterday that the group laundered the profits it gained via Cypriot firms.

The DPP ordered an analysis of a dozen of its big contracts signed in the past few years.

Laska said the analysis showed these contracts were overpriced and very disadvantageous for the company operated by the city. The damage incurred reached hundreds of millions of crowns, he added.

A criminal complaint was filed last Wednesday. On the following day, the DPP supervisory board sacked the company's director general Vladimir Lich who initiated the filling of the complaints, over alleged managerial faults. On August 17, or the following morning, the anti-corruption police raided the DPP offices.

DPP present head Magdalena Ceskova said yesterday members of the supervisory and managing boards were not acquainted with the completed legal analysis, although they asked for its results.

Ceskova said she believed only Prague Mayor Bohuslav Svoboda and Lich received the information. The supervisory board did not even know that the complaints would be filed, she added.

Laska dismissed this. He said he presented the results of the analysis at a meeting in which DPP supervisory board head Jiri Nouza (TOP 09) participated and to which Ceskova was invited but did not come.

Laska said the DPP authorised him to file the complaints and the written authorisation was signed by Ceskova.

Ceskova said the DPP management wants to discuss the situation with Laska in the next days.

She said the DPP management yesterday decided to declare a tender for the company's new director soon.

Ceskova said a forensic audit lasting months should be ordered to thoroughly check the contracts described in the legal analysis and possibly also other ones.

($1=20.280 crowns)