Prague, Feb 10 (CTK) – The database of Czech state court disputes cost a lot of money and the state paid over 400,000 crowns for its operation every month for five years, although there have been no data in the database so far, daily Lidove noviny (LN) writes Wednesday.
This database is one of the most striking cases of useless spending od state finances on information technologies, the paper writes.
In 2009, the Office for Government Representation in Property Affairs (UZSVM), which plays the role of the law office of the state, decided that it needs a central database of court disputes. It paid 18 million crowns for the creation of the database to IBM and it gradually paid the firm 26 million for the operation and maintenance of the database.
The UZSVM represents the state in disputes that exceed certain financial limits, for example, if more than 250 million crowns are at stake in business disputes. If the sums are below the limit, the state offices and institutions concerned deal with the court disputes themselves.
Thanks to the new database, UZSVM lawyers were to have access to information about all disputes in which an individual or firm had a court dispute with a state body. This would allow the lawyers to connect information from several disputes that concerned the same firm or person, the paper writes.
But state institutions have no duty to enter data on their disputes into the database. As a result, no data have been entered and the database comprises only information from the UZSVM internal system.
UZSVM director Katerina Arajmu said the database was frozen in mid-2015 and payments for its operation were stopped.
“The database was of no use. Other state bodies were not ordered by law, or at least a government resolution, to contribute to the system,” Arajmu told LN.
The UZSVM and its superior institution, the Finance Ministry, repeatedly tried to revive the database.
“I remember that under (finance minister) Miroslav Kalousek we called on other institutions several times to enter data into the system. All this was in vain,” a source that worked at the Finance Ministry told LN, requesting anonymity.
Arajmu ordered a check that showed that no public tender was declared for the creation of the database and that other rules demanded by the Supreme Audit Office (NKU) were violated, too. The police and the financial office will deal with the case, the paper writes.
Arajmu said she is filing a criminal complaint over the defects these days. She said she has recently been receiving anonymous threats that seemed to be connected with her effort to revise some disadvantageous contracts.
The person responsible for the purchase of the database seems to be UZSVM former director Miloslav Vanek whom the police prosecute over other controversial contracts, including regular payments for unclear consulting services by former top state attorney Renata Vesecka and former senior judge Pavel Kucera, the paper writes.
If the duty to contribute to the database is introduced or if some other change related to the powers of the UZSVM is made, the database may be restarted and become useful, LN writes.
In 2015, the UZSVM operation cost 1.5 billion crowns and its incomes, mostly from sales of unused state property, reached 1.9 billion crowns.
