Prague, Sept 22 (CTK) – Radmila Kleslova resigned Tuesday from the post of the Czech government ANO movement’s deputy chairwoman, citing the media attacks on her among the reasons, she has announced in a press release.
Kleslova, 52, who is also mayor of the Prague 10 district, resigned closely ahead of the evening meeting of the ANO leadership to deal with her alleged pressure exerted on the CEZ state power utility firm’s supervisory board and her posts in the bodies of Prague municipal firms.
“After permanent pressure that the media were exerting on me in the past weeks, I decided to step down from the post of ANO deputy chairwoman,” Kleslova, lawyer by profession, wrote.
She added that she would thereby like to halt the defamatory campaign harming ANO, which, Lukas Wagenknecht, former deputy to Finance Minister and ANO chairman Andrej Babis, had unleashed.
“I do not have the strength to withstand the everyday pressure by journalists any more,” she wrote.
The media reported in the past few weeks about a contract of Kleslova’s lawyer office with CEZ thanks to which she had earned up top 100,000 crowns a month.
The media has also pointed out that Kleslova is a member of the board of the Prazska teplarenska municipal heating company and heads the supervisory board of the Prazska energetika power company in Prague. She annually gains millions of crowns from the posts, daily Lidove noviny has written.
The Neovlivni.cz server has also released a recording in which Kleslova accused Wagenknecht, along with other CEZ board members, of having informed the media about her contract with CEZ.
Babis previously said this recording made him decide to deal with the Kleslova case at the ANO leadership’s meeting.
Kleslova is also suspected of collaboration with the former communist intelligence service. She argues that she never worked for it and was only singled out by the service when she was seeking a job at the Foreign Ministry.
