Brussels/Prague, Dec 10 (CTK) – Czech MEP Miloslav Ransdorf (Communists, KSCM) will suspend his membership of the left-wing GUE/NGL group in the European Parliament after the Swiss police arrested him in a Zurich bank and he has been suspected of a financial fraud, he told the public Czech Television (CT) yesterday.
Ransdorf told CT that he has not committed any fraud.
He said he wants to explain the circumstances of the Swiss bank case to his colleagues in the European United Left/Nordic Green Left (GUE/NGL) Group.
Last Thursday, the Swiss police detained Ransdorf along with three Slovaks in a Zurich bank and then questioned them on suspicion of a financial fraud. Ransdorf and two of the Slovaks were then release.
On Tuesday, KSCM leader Vojtech Filip said documents that Ransdorf submitted to the party leadership showed that he did not commit any crime.
The High State Attorney´s Office in Zurich said the Swiss authorities prosecuted the four suspects over property delicts.
Slovak Interior Minister Robert Kalinak said previously Ransdorf and the three Slovaks had attempted to transfer a high sum on the basis of false documents in Switzerland and this was why the bank had called the police. The sum concerned was 350 million euros, the Slovak media reported.
But Ransdorf told the media that he did not want to collect any money at the Swiss bank and only wanted to gain information on the inheritance from a Swiss citizen who died in 2005. A Czech citizen was the woman´s heir, he added.
Ransdorf said the money was certainly not any inheritance from a Nazi official or the property of the Jews who deposited it in the bank during the war, about which some media speculated.
kva/mr/rtj
