Prague, May 25 (CTK) – The Czech Finance Ministry has joined the criminal proceedings former managers of the MUS coal mining firm face over the suspicious privatisation and mismanagement of MUS, and it will claim 8.6 billion crowns in compensation for the damage caused to the state, Seznam Zpravy server reported yesterday.
“The Finance Ministry has joined the criminal proceedings with its compensation claim,” its spokesman Michal Zurovec said.
In early May, the High State Attorney’s Office filed criminal charges against six men, including five ex-managers of MUS and former deputy industry minister Robert Sykora, who is suspected of bribe taking.
The former managers involved are Antonin Kolacek, Marek Cmejla, Jiri Divis, Oldrich Klimecky and Petr Kraus. The attorneys say their fraudulent privatisation of MUS and the subsequent illegal siphoning off money from it caused the damage of at least 3.2 billion crowns to the state.
The managers have pleaded not guilty since the beginning.
The Office for Government Representation in Property Affairs (UZSVM), which will represent the Finance Ministry in the dispute, wants to base its higher compensation claim on its previous calculation of the sum, according to Seznam Zpravy.
Originally, eight people were prosecuted in the MUS case. The sixth suspicious manager, Lubos Mekota, died in 2013, and the prosecution of Pavel Musela, former lobbyist and armament dealer suspected of bribing a state attorney, was stopped by the court for health reasons.
The case has also been in focus of the Swiss judiciary. In late 2013, a court in Bellinzona imposed prison sentences from 16 months to 52 months on the five managers, who appealed the verdict.
The Czech authorities have been watching the Swiss procedure because the suspects cannot be parallelly tried for the same crime in both countries. It will depend on which of the courts involved will decide faster.
($1=24.642 crowns)
