Prague, Nov 2 (CTK) – Ivan Bilek is leaving the post of the Czech General Inspection of Security Forces (GIBS) head and he has asked for being released from the GIBS, Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka (Social Democrats, CSSD) said on Twitter on Monday, calling Bilek´s decision decent and reasonable.
The GIBS and Bilek have recently come under criticism in connection with the Olomouc case of suspected abuse of power by regional police officers and their suspicious links with local entrepreneurs and politicians.
Sobotka said he has met Bilek´s request for being dismissed as from November 30.
The GIBS´s task is to detect, uncover and investigate suspected crimes committed by police and customs officers, prison guards and GIBS inspectors themselves.
Bilek, 51, headed the GIBS from 2012, when the GIBS was established.
Earlier on Monday, Bilek´s departure as GIBS head was requested by Deputy PM and Finance Minister Andrej Babis (ANO), and previously also by Interior Minister Milan Chovanec (CSSD).
“GIBS director Bilek asked for being released from the GIBS. This is a decent and reasonable decision, in view of the GIBS´s [recently] impaired reputation,” Sobotka wrote.
At a press conference shortly before, he said Bilek should consider whether he should remain in his post “now that [people´s] confidence in the GIBS has fallen so steeply.”
In reaction to Bilek´s departure as GIBS head, Chovanec called it a correct decision.
“Now this important institution must quickly gain a trustworthy and experienced management. Only this will enable us to see whether the GIBS is capable of working effectively in its current shape. However, I am afraid that the problem is deeper and a single departure would not resolve it,” server Aktualne.cz quoted Chovanec as saying.
“It would be good if Bilek left the post, a step we all urge him to take,” Babis said after the cabinet meeting earlier this afternoon.
“This is another failure of the GIBS,” Babis said in an allusion to the Olomouc case.
Babis said the GIBS also made mistakes in connection with the case involving the distribution and sale of poisonous bootleg alcohol that cost dozens of lives in 2012.
In the Olomouc Region, north Moravia, the case of suspicious links between entrepreneurs, police officers and politicians has been investigated by the police organised crime squad (UOOZ), though similar cases involving suspicous police should be investigated by the GIBS.
The four accused suspects in the case are the Olomouc Region Governor Jiri Rozboril (CSSD), influential businessman Ivan Kysely, Olomouc regional police deputy head Karel Kadlec and financial crime squad head Radek Petruj.
They are suspected of having influenced and marred the investigation into selected criminal cases.
The GIBS Olomouc branch, headed by Tomas Ulicny, checked alleged suspicious ties between Kadlec and Kysely in reaction to an anonymous letter three years ago, but it shelved the case.
According to media, the UOOZ investigators have also shown interest in Ulicny in connection with the Olomouc case.
The GIBS has been supervised by the lower house´s permanent commission. At a seminar in the upper house in October, some lawmakers and Bilek agreed that the supervision of the GIBS was insufficient. They discussed a possible change to the law that would make the supervision more thorough.
The GIBS director is appointed and dismissed by the prime minister on the proposal of the cabinet, after the proposal is discussed by the lower house´s security committee.
The GIBS head is accountable to the prime minister.
