Prague, July 20 (CTK) – New Czech Agriculture Minister Miroslav Toman (for Social Democrats, CSSD) plans an audit of the returning of property to churches to check whether state institutions dealing with the restitution claims sufficiently defended the state interests, Pravo wrote on Friday.
According to the restitution law from 2012, churches are returned land and real estate worth 75 billion, confiscated from them by the Communist regime, and given 59 billion crowns plus inflation in financial compensation for unreturned property during the following 30 years. Simultaneously, the state gradually ceases financing churches.
Toman wants to check the steps by the organisations that fall under his ministry, such as the State Land Office and the Lesy CR state forestry company, in the church restitution process.
He plans to set up a commission for the church restitution audit at the ministry at the end of July and begining of August. Its members are to be CSSD MP and agriculture expert Karel Machovec and former South Moravia Regional Governor Michal Hasek (CSSD) who will also head the ministry’s legislative council.
“The commission will look into the steps by Lesy CR, the State Land Offices and all other subordinate organisations that returned any property to churches in the past,” Tomas told Pravo.
The special commission is to find out whether these organisations proceeded correctly in the property return, that si whether they sufficiently defended the state interests.
The audit will be carried out for six months up to one year, Toman said. “I will naturally want it to take the shortest possible time,” he added.
The audit is to focus on, for instance, whether the institutions respected the decrees issued by Czechoslovak president President Edvard Benes in 1945 that provided for the confiscation of the property of collaborators, traitors, ethnic Germans and Hungarians, except for those who themselves suffered under the Nazis, and the transfer of these groups from Czechoslovakia.
Under the law on the church restitution, the institutions must not return the property confiscated on the basis of the Benes decrees.
The audit might affect the Order the Sovereign Military Order of Malta that was returned almost 1,400 hectares of fields and forests in the restitution.
If the auditors find out that an institution made mistakes, the case will be sent to lawyers.
“This is one of the reasons why I have established the Agriculture Ministry Legislative Council,” Toman said.
The CSSD is convinced that the financial compensation for the property that cannot be returned to churches should be taxed, which would lower the 59-billion-crown compensation by some 11 billion. This is also supported by the Communists (KSCM), who kept the minority government of ANO and the CSSD afloat in a confidence vote in the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of parliament. It is yet to deal with the respective bill on the taxation of the church restitution.
However, lawyers and constitutional experts agree that the Constitutional Court would probably annul the legislation if it were passed, since the compensation payment of about two billion crowns a year is based on a valid agreement between the state and churches, Pravo writes.
