This book does not intend to build on certain ingrained stereotypes, either positive or negative, with which we label certain periods. And it doesn’t matter what ideology has put these labels in our heads. We think that the first one, where at least we have ingrained obviously displaced ideas, is the period of the First Republic, i.e. attitudes towards corruption in the interwar period. We would like to preface this by saying that we do not want to demolish the idea of First Republic statehood as a phenomenon of Europe at that time, with Daddy Masaryk at its head.
First Republic politics was not only about Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk and his motto “fear not and steal not”. By the way, even with this slogan it was quite interesting. It was not written during the First Republic, but before the war, and it is a kind of extract from Masaryk’s speech in which he described the conditions in the leadership of Prague at that time, where, in his words, there were several thieves. But to return to a hundred years of history, the interwar period was also full of crimes that have not been solved to this day, with specific economic interests behind them, which in turn were represented by individual political parties. In order to understand this period, we must also remember that most of the political parties of the time, which fought for the votes of the electorate in free elections, had their own electoral bases, for whose benefit they presented laws, for which they negotiated, but also lobbied, often with very unfair instruments.
Here we can recall a few of these scandals that have come to light to give you a better idea. These are by no means all the stinking cases of the 20-year period. Apart from outright bribery abominations, we would also find businessmen in the First Republic installing economic ministers as they saw fit, or the sugar lobby controlling “their” politicians throughout this period.
Jiří Stříbrný and the Coal Affair
One of the most prominent faces of the First Republic was Jiří Stříbrný, a politician already during the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the man of 28 October (1918) and several times minister. In his ministerial portfolio he had successively everything – telegraphs, railways and national defence. It is not without interest that if we think that Andrej Babiš is the only Czech politician who has tried to influence public opinion through his own media, we are mistaken. In this respect, Babiš has been overtaken by almost a century by Stříbrný and his brother František and their several bizarre periodicals and tabloids. It was brother Francis and his connections that caused the temporary political decline of Stříbrný in the mid-1920s. At that time, information emerged that Minister Silver was taking bribes. He was supposed to take money not only for himself but also for the National Socialist Party, of which he was a top official and was involved in its economic management. According to the press of the time, the corrupt dealings consisted in the Ministry of Railways, which Jiří Stříbrný used to head and under which the Czechoslovak State Railways also fell, buying overpriced coal from a company which was in turn run by his brother František. Although the evidence was quite strong, Jiří Stříbrný was later acquitted by the court.
Karel Prášek and the Alcohol Affair
The protagonist of the biggest corruption scandal of the interwar period was Karel Prášek, Minister of Agriculture and later President of the Senate. During the case, which is not comparable to the later case of Karel Březina, it broke that the representatives of the Agrarian Party with Prášek at its head were paid a lot of money for defending the interests of the distillers. But what was at stake was that it should not be revealed that there was a very profitable and tax-cheating sale of alcohol. However, a society-wide scandal was caused by the information that the distillers had also created a fat corruption fund. From this, one of the highest constitutional officials, Prasek, bribes other parties, journalists and other public officials, including churches, religious societies and trade unions, with multimillion-dollar sums. Only a fraction of this has been proven, but on the basis of published information, this politician is finished. President Masaryk also played the role of moral authority in this matter. Masaryk’s symbolic speeches from that time are well known, such as not shaking hands with Prášek on a solemn occasion, etc.
A Legal Point
At the time of the First Republic, Austrian Law No. 117/1852 on crimes, offences and misdemeanours was still in force. The acceptance of bribes was dealt with in section 104 and the crime of taking gifts in official matters defined therein. This offence is committed by an official who, in the administration of justice, in the provision of services or in the decision-making of public affairs, does his office in accordance with his duty but, in order to do it, indirectly or directly accepts a gift or otherwise arranges or promises himself a benefit; and also by one who, in the course of his official work, is seduced by it into partisanship. This official corrupter was then to be punished by imprisonment for between six months and one year. The definition of the offence of bribery can then be described as rather imperfect. While this was dealt with in section 105 on enticement to do so, the imposition of punishment for such conduct was considerably delayed.
Bribery under the above-mentioned provision was then supplemented by the crime of abuse of official authority under Section 102. The offences were similarly defined in the Military Criminal Act.
The First Republic legislators reacted to the above-mentioned Prášek affair by adopting Act No. 178/1924 Coll., on bribery and against violation of official secrets. This change was significant in terms of widening the range of perpetrators of corrupt behaviour. Indeed, under sections 2, 3 and 4, not only an unworthy public official could be punished, but also the agent of a corrupt act, i.e. the person who offered the bribe in various ways. A public official was not only a civil servant, a police officer or a gendarme, but also a person from the private sector who was entrusted with a responsibility of wider public interest. The punishment for this expanded range of offenders remained imprisonment for six months to a year. In spite of the disproportionately less favourable prison system of the time, it can be noted that the penalties for corrupt behaviour were not excessive compared to other offences.
What remained in the corruption pot?
To conclude our discussion of the First Republic, we should define what remains in the imaginary cooking pot of corruption from this period to this day. First of all, we must say that there was a huge latent criminality. The few convictions of petty officials or policemen who took some money to perhaps help sweep up some mischief were critically few. The entire political system was built on lobbying for the core constituency of one political party or another. If the goal was achieved by passing laws, it is a projection of pluralistic democratic principles. However, if the objectives were achieved by people like Powder or Silver by creating funds to bribe other political players, and if the objectives consisted of violating competition or otherwise acting illegitimately, this was corruption-ridden organised crime. And it is tolerance of this system that is part of the legacy we have taken away from this time, and one of the ingredients in the corruption pot.
The second ingredient in the imaginary bowl is that even if the thing bursts, not that much happens. A six-month prison sentence for accepting bribes that distort the system of set rules is a mockery of the way the First Republic system rated this despicable behaviour at the level of a petty offence. Nor can it be overlooked in this era that the hand of the law has virtually never fallen on the ‘big fish’ and the ordinary people have thus seen that there is a kind of privileged group that can afford virtually anything.
