Prague, March 20 (CTK) – The Czech police accused influential lobbyist Roman Janousek of money laundering related to Chambon, a firm providing blood tests, according to information that CTK received on Monday.
Janousek and his four accomplices allegedly gained 176 million crowns in a fraudulent way.
The supervising state attorney, Alexandr Dadam, told CTK that the police accused four people of fraud and illegal trading in the Chambon case. In March, the accusation of money laundering was added and one more person was accused, Dadam said.
According to CTK’s information, the fifth suspect is Janousek who had a stake in Chambon.
Businessmen Petr Ullrich and Lubos Pasek, a close cooperator of Janousek, are among the suspects.
Olomouc Deputy High State Attorney Pavel Komar told Czech Radio (CRo) in January that the four suspects cheated health insurance companies of 103 million crowns in 2009-2010 and caused damage of 39 million crowns.
The police focused on Chambon during an extensive raid in mid-2013, which resulted in the fall of the right-wing government of Petr Necas (Civic Democrats, ODS). The police then seized money and gold worth tens of millions of crowns from Pasek.
Chambon provided genetic blood tests of patients for a number of hospitals. Media wrote previously that Chambon’s successor company, Synlab Genetics, has to pay the VZP health insurance company about 10 million crowns.
The political lobbyist Janousek allegedly influenced key decisions in Prague politics and pushed through contracts disadvantageous for the city in the 2000s when Pavel Bem (ODS) was Prague mayor.
Janousek was sentenced to 4.5 years in prison for intentionally knocking down a woman with his car in 2012. He was driving drunk and he drove away after the accident. Janousek started serving his prison sentence in late 2014 but his prison stay was suspended for health reasons last November.
