Prague, Feb 5 (CTK) – Marek Dalik, former adviser to Czech PM Mirek Topolanek (Civic Democrats, ODS, 2006-2009) who was sentenced to five years in prison for assisting in bribe taking last week, was the real ODS chief and Topolanek worked for him, not vice versa, Istvan Leko wrote in Friday’s issue of Lidové noviny.
The sentence is not yet valid because lobbyist Dalik, 39, appealed it.
In autumn 2007, Dalik took part in the negotiations about the purchase of Pandur armoured personnel carriers [from the Austrian Steyr firm] for the Czech military and the court claims that he asked a bribe of 480 million crowns in this connection, Leko writes.
He writes that after the “lobbyist of all lobbyists,” Frantisek Mrazek, was shot dead in January 2006, the huge market in influencing public procurement worth billions of crowns was redistributed.
It was a period where people who shaped politics as well as politicians, were negotiating mainly about who will have influence in state and Prague-controlled firms and how big the influence will be, Leko writes.
He writes that a bribe of half a billion crowns for state contracts worth 15 billion crowns was not something that would have shocked anyone.
At that time, Dalik and Roman Janousek surfaced. The first was active on the national level, the latter controlled Prague. They both gave rise to two inseparable tandems Topolanek-Dalik and [former mayor of Prague Pavel] Bem-Janousek, Leko writes.
He quotes Vlastimil Tlusty, a former ODS strongman, as saying that Dalik was the genuine ODS chief. “Dalik did not work for Topolanek, but Topolanek worked for Dalik. He was a pure lobbyist who actually took no interest in politics. He subordinated the ODS operation to business and commissions,” Tlusty said.
This period, the same as the previous large stages of the post-communist division of property (privatisation, siphoning off money of investment funds and banks, and others) did not only reinforce the positions of the existing powerful financiers, but it also created a new layer of billionaires, Leko writes.
When privatisation practically ended, lobbyists started to move around huge state and municipal (particularly Prague) contracts, EU subsidies and large firms, with the CEZ power company led by Martin Roman leaving the others far behind, Leko writes.
Some lobbyists had a finger in dozens of deals getting a few percent from each, while the large ones only bet on one large shot a year, but for 10 or 20 percent, Leko writes.
Leko takes the charges against Dalik as granted and asks whether Dalik could have come to the negotiations with the Austrian armament makers, accompanied by then deputy defence minister Martin Bartak, without Topolanek knowing this and asking 480 million crowns as an individual.
Leko again seeks an answer to these questions in what Tlusty said in the autumn of 2012.
Tlusty said that “all actors [in the deal] knew that Dalik was there as a dominant person of the ODS and the one who has minimally a discretionary power from Topolanek for conducting such negotiations. They may have even know that he is more than Topolanek and that is why they talked to him. The deputy defence minister [Bartak] must have confirmed this while drinking coffee with them because they would have otherwise left.”
