Prague, Jan 5 (CTK) – Czech Presidential Office head Vratislav Mynar failed with his remonstrance challenging the National Security Office´s (NBU) refusal to grant him top security vetting and he will turn to a court, the public Czech Television (CT) reported yesterday, referring to Mynar.
Mynar told CTK on Monday that he had expected a similar decision.
Mynar said he did not expect NBU director Dusan Navratil to change the decision of his office. He said he would use all the opportunities to appeal.
Presidential Office spokesman Jiri Ovcacek said President Milos Zeman had not changed his previous stance saying he would dismiss Mynas only after he failed with all appeals.
Zeman said previously Mynar can always have a respectable post in the Presidential Office even without a security vetting.
Mynar received the NBU’s decision on not being granted a security vetting of a strictly confidential level in September and he filed a remonstrance against it in October.
His defence lawyers challenged the NBU’s legal assessment.
Mynar can file an administrative complaint with the Prague Municipal Court within 30 days, and if he failed, he can also file a cassation complaint with the Supreme Administrative Court, but it would not postpone the effect of the NBU´s decision.
CT said Mynar was preparing an administrative complaint.
NBU spokesman Radek Holy told CTK that a decision of NBU director takes effect as soon as the person who appealed receives it.
Mynar said he believed the issue was political because other people were granted the vetting within a few weeks and did not have to meet the NBU officers for talks. People close to Zeman seemed to be stripped of their vetting, he said, referring to the president’s military office head Rostislav Pilc and one of Zeman’s candidates for ambassador.
Mynar has headed the Presidential Office without a security clearance for three years. He asked for it in 2013, though he said he would not need it for the post under law, and the clearance process was launched a year later.
According to experts, the court will last so long that Mynar will be able to keep the post of Presidential Office head until the end of Zeman’s presidential mandate in 2018.
Mynar dismissed the view that he was deliberately delaying the process.
Civic Democrat (opposition ODS) deputy chairman Martin Kupka called on Zeman to promptly sack Mynar. “It is unacceptable for one of the closest assistants to the president to be without a security vetting,” he said.
The reasons for the NBU’s decision are not known.
However, speculations have emerged saying some of Mynar’s business contacts might be an obstacle as well as his dubious purchase of a villa in Prague for an allegedly too low price. Mynar dismissed it in the past.
hol,kva/dr/rtj
