Prague, Nov 11 (CTK) – The financial police will start working within the new National Centre against Organised Crime (NCOZ) on January 1, 2017, Czech Interior Minister Milan Chovanec (Social Democrats, CSSD) told CTK on Friday.
He said several dozen police officers will work for the new financial police unit.
“Our ambition is to extend the unit step by step,” he said, adding that it could establish branches in all Czech regions after some time.
The police teams that have been focusing on financial crime are likely to create the new unit.
First of all, the special team Cobra that fights tax frauds will operate within the financial police, Chovanec said.
Cobra is based on cooperation between the police, the customs administration and the tax administration.
Chovanec said the Interior Ministry is negotiating about the financial police with the Finance Ministry, which wants to extend the powers of customs officers. At present, both plans partly collide, he said.
“We are trying to find a reasonable agreement, which would benefit both structures,” he said.
The financial police worked in the Czech Republic in 2005-06.
Chovanec said police officials will also talk about the final shape of the financial police with state attorneys at the Supreme State Attorney’s Office in Brno in a few days.
“I am very glad that the whole process is discussed with the state attorneys,” he said.
Earlier this year, state attorneys criticised the police for introducing the NCOZ without discussing the plan with them thoroughly. The police reshuffle caused controversy between the CSSD and the ANO movement and ANO even threatened to leave the government because of it.
The NCOZ started working in August and the police squads for fighting corruption and organised crime merged within it. The Police Presidium said a single centre would make the fight against crime more effective.
In summer, a parliamentary commission began to investigate the reshuffle since some elite detectives claimed that it was motivated by effort to sweep sensitive cases under the carpet. One of the former elite detectives accused Police President Tomas Tuhy of a “brutal leak of information.”
Chovanec said it needs to be proved whether the failure in the investigation of the alleged leak related to Tuhy was not an attempt to remove the independent police president.
He said Tuhy and his relatives faced an investigation. If it turned out that the investigation was deliberately manipulated, it would be an attempt at a police putsch, he said.
“I firmly believe that the General Inspection of Security Corps (GIBS) has been dealing with it and that we will hear the result very soon,” Chovanec said.
Chovanec said the NCOZ seems to be working well.
Apart from financial crime, cybercrime is a pressing issue and more experts need to deal with it, he said.
“This is one of the fields in which crime is paradoxically beating us, in which crime is not falling but rising,” Chovanec said.
He said the Interior Ministry wants to push through an increase in the starting salaries of police officers.
