Criminal investigators from the National Centre against Organised Crime (NCOZ) believe that Brno Mayor Markéta Vaňková (ODS) is involved in the case of the allocation of non-residential premises in Brno, according to information from Seznam Zprávy. They stated that the premises in the house on Hlinky Street were originally intended to be used to build housing for Vaňková and that her relatives played the role of white horses. The server recalls that Justice Minister Pavel Blažek (ODS), through his ministerial powers, asked the Supreme State Prosecutor’s Office for some information on this branch of the case.
On 10 August, the Supreme State Prosecutor’s Office in Olomouc announced that it had begun prosecuting four people in connection with the allocation of non-residential premises in Brno at 46 and 46a Hlinka Street. Two of them are being prosecuted again, and two are being prosecuted anew. At the time, the prosecutor, Petra Lastovecká, refused to tell the Czech Press Agency whether the men in question hold any political positions. Criminal investigators suspect three people of bribery and one person of complicity. A fourth is suspected of fraud.
“The version that the attic premises were originally intended for Markéta Vaňková, who had the lease contracts formally concluded for her brother-in-law and his companion, who themselves did not have sufficient funds for the eventual construction of the flats, seems plausible to the police,” NCOZ investigators wrote in a document announcing the charges against the suspects, Denise Hlubocká and Monika Janošková, according to the server. According to the server, police prosecuted both as early as last autumn.
According to the server, Hlubočka partially cooperated with the detectives, saying she was part of a group that manipulated the allocation and privatization of city apartments on a larger scale in Brno. The website reports that she also gave investigators some of the documents that the suspects have so far managed to keep from police searches. “Police officers have the testimony of a second cooperating defendant who describes the system run by ODS politicians. The first is a former good friend of the South Moravian Civic Democrats, Pavel Hubálek, also charged in the case,” Seznam Zprávy reported. According to the server, both Blažek and Vaňková describe Hubálek as a fraud who lies to get out of his own prosecution.
The server writes that detectives believe the attic space should have been used by Vaňková, even though the management of the Brno city hall, which is occupied by her fellow ODS party members, officially assigned it to relatives. In 2012, one of the lofts was assigned to the mayor’s brother-in-law, Ondřej Vaňková, and the other to his girlfriend. At that time, Markéta Vaňková sat on the council that decided to allocate the loft space to relatives. The allocation of the flats bears the signature of the then mayor Libor Št’astka. He told the police that he did not know that he was signing the lease for the relatives of his councillor. According to the server, Vaňková’s relatives later asked the town hall to sign over the allocated loft space to another couple. According to the server, the police believed they were just set-up persons.
The Vaňková family eventually opted for a different apartment; the premises on Hlinky Street are managed by a man who has no lease agreement with the town at all, one apartment is rented by students and the other is used to rent to tourists, the server concluded.
Source: Seznam Zprávy and CTK
