The Regional Court in Brno will today announce a decision in the case of some of the defendants in a secondary branch of the corruption case at Brno City Hall, the so-called Stoka case. The case involves three defendants who have denied guilt and one who confessed but denied being part of an organised crime group. The prosecutor proposed suspended sentences. The secondary branch concerns the “bottom tier” of the case, mostly executives or craftsmen who, according to the indictment, received contracts in exchange for bribes. The court has previously punished defendants who confessed in the same case.
The prosecutor charged ten people and one company with influencing the awarding of public contracts at the Brno-Central City Real Estate Administration. The court first heard the case last November, when some of the defendants pleaded guilty and others denied it. To simplify the proceedings, the court split the case into two separate trials, and in mid-February it ruled on those who confessed. At that time, the company executives and tradesmen who, according to the indictment, gave 15 percent of the contract in bribes to get the contracts walked away from the court with conditions and fines.
In the case of the four defendants now under trial, the court continued to take evidence. Marek Slovák, a former administration technician who, according to the indictment, accepted bribes, and Jakub Churý, Miloš Müller and Vlastimil Ströer, businessmen or employees of the company who, according to the indictment, bribed for the contracts, stood trial. According to the indictment, the bribes amounted to a few thousand crowns, but in the aggregate they amounted to hundreds of thousands to millions of crowns for several defendants.
In the Stoka case, the court ruled against nine people and two companies last year, including former deputy mayor and city councillor Jiří Švachula (formerly ANO). Švachula denied guilt and appealed the verdict, as did the prosecutor and other defendants. The case will now be heard by the High Court in Olomouc.
Source: CTK
