A monument to Zeman’s era of corruption is the D47 motorway, an 80-kilometre stretch from Lipník nad Bečvou through Ostrava to the Polish border. The big show, during which Prime Minister Miloš Zeman and Transport Minister Jaromír Schling tapped the foundation stone of this construction in Ostrava-Svinov, took place on 21 July 1999. Subsequently, one of the biggest dirty things of the post-revolutionary era was being prepared and fine-tuned. Despite the opposition of a few brave experts and without a tender, a contract with the Israeli company Housing & Construction (H&C) was being prepared. It was not until 5 June 2002, a week before the elections, that the Social Democratic cabinet approved the contract with this pre-selected contractor. This was to be the first Czech construction project to be implemented under the so-called PPP project, i.e. cooperation between the public and private sectors.
In total, our government should have paid 125 billion crowns to the Israelis for 30 years of cooperation in highway maintenance. According to experts who opposed the project, we would have paid around 500 billion for this road.
However, the construction of the motorway did not start until the next government, that of Prime Minister Vladimír Špidla and a new minister, on 16 October 2003. The construction was originally due to be completed in 2009. Fortunately, the tunnel was stopped and the threatened hundreds of billions from the state budget did not disappear. The state paid only CZK 650 million in compensation.
Jiří Petrák, the former director of the Czech branch of the British company Mott MacDonald, which was supposed to advise Zeman’s government on the project, later explained the mafia-like conditions that prevailed during the planning of the event and the manipulations, detentions and threats that were applied at the time. Petrák, however, categorically disagreed with the solution.
The circle of people who were involved in the transaction is not without interest. For example, the secretary of the steering committee for the preparation of the construction was the Olomouc shyster František Vybíral, a former communist cadre. Especially remarkable for the orientation of Zeman and his cronies were Vybíral’s contacts in the post-Soviet space. Later, Vybíral – close to organized crime lord František Mrázek – became a central figure in another corruption case, the biolíh case.
In 1999, Václav Klaus founded the civic association Centre for Economics and Politics (CEP) and served as the first chairman of its board of directors. In 2002, at the 13th Congress of the Civic Democratic Party, Václav Klaus was replaced in the ODS leadership by the newly elected President Mirek Topolánek.
In the next parliamentary elections in 2002, the ČSSD won again and the left was strengthened, which was perceived as a failure of both ODS and Klaus. The ODS leadership subsequently made their positions available. Klaus later decided not to run again for party chairman and announced his intention to run for the presidency of the republic. He recommended Petr Nečas as his successor, but Mirek Topolánek was elected ODS chairman and Václav Klaus became honorary party chairman. He resigned from this post on 6 December 2008.
Klaus’s presidential candidacy was successful when he was elected President of the Czech Republic by 142 votes out of 281 in the third round of re-election on 28 February 2003. In the joint vote of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, he won not only thanks to the support of the ODS, but also because of the contradictions in the then ruling coalition, the internal struggle in the ČSSD and the support of a part of the KSČM. He was inaugurated on 7 March 2003. Klaus’s first term expired on 7 March 2008.
In 2008, Klaus’s opponent in the first presidential election was the economist Jan Švejnar, who was also supported by former President Václav Havel. The election took place on 8 and 9 February and did not produce a winner, although Václav Klaus was only one vote short of being elected in the third round. In the second election on 15 February 2008, Klaus was elected president in the third round, receiving 141 votes.
During that period, Klaus became the butt of popular jokes. For example, there was the so-called “Chilean incident” when, during a state visit to Chile, he took a protocol pen made of the blue semi-precious stone lapis lazuli and put it in his pocket. In February 2012, Václav Klaus, together with his sons and Chancellor Jiří Weigl, founded a study and research company called the “Václav Klaus Institute”. However, the Institute’s activities can be defined more as a lobbying organisation. In 2015, Klaus was caught soliciting financial support from fugitive businessman František Savov in London.
Since 1990 Václav Klaus has been an active member of the Montpelier Society, an association of liberal economists. However, his speeches tend to arouse the emotions of conservatives. Critics accuse Klaus of slipping into populism in an attempt to attract fans.
This was confirmed during the refugee crisis, when, in addition to his xenophobic views, he also expressed criticism of the European Union’s greatest asset – the Schengen area. He is unable to substantiate his childish criticism of Brussels with arguments, and last time he even expressed his joy at Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union. He foolishly praises this step, which has also unpleasantly affected Czech citizens, and compares the European Union, which his government joined, to Nazi Germany. He also joined the disinformationists and pro-Russian lobbyists during the global pandemic of covid-19 and after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The period of the opposition agreement was a time when democracy in the Czech Republic and Slovakia found itself at a crossroads. In the Czech Republic, a business coalition was emerging that wanted to drive all competition out of politics. In Slovakia, there was an even deeper darkness – the state, in a struggle between the prime minister and the president, committed the kidnapping of the president’s son, culminating in a contract killing and unprecedented amnesties for its own crimes. It took 20 years of public pressure to reach a political decision to lift part of the amnesties. However, it was only a symbolic act that did not punish the perpetrators of the most brutal crimes. Not even a fraction of the suspects have been brought to justice because of obstruction on the part of the investigations and the courts.
On 3 March 1998, the Slovak Prime Minister Vladimír Mečiar announced these amnesties. He was able to take this unprecedented step because on 2 March the term of office of Slovakia’s first president, Michal Kováč, ended and some of his powers were transferred to the prime minister. It took him only a few hours to announce an amnesty for serious crimes relating to the kidnapping of the president’s son. The amnesties covered not only cases already tried, but also some suspicions still in the first stages of the investigation. They were also unprecedented in their vagueness and breadth.
The amnesties from the Prime Minister’s workshop directly ordered the termination of criminal prosecution for offences related to the thwarted referendum and the abduction of Michal Kováč Jr. abroad.
In the case of the May 1997 referendum, it was an attempt by Mečiar and his cabinet to achieve two goals – to prevent the country from joining the North Atlantic Alliance and to prevent the introduction of direct election of the president, whose office Mečiar had his teeth into. The referendum had three security issues, including a question on Slovakia’s entry into NATO. On the basis of a petition, President Kovac added a fourth question on the direct election of the president to the referendum ballot. Interior Minister Gustáv Krajči, on Mečiar’s instructions, instructed to print ballots with only the first three questions, despite the law and political agreement. The Central Referendum Commission therefore had to label it a bust. Apart from the risks related to the content of the referendum, it was also a gamble with public confidence in democratic institutions, which was apparently a kind of bonus for Mečiar.
The amnesty passages concerning the forced removal of President Michal Kováč’s son to Austria in 1995 were also very serious. This was part of the political struggle between Prime Minister Mečiar and the President. Kovac refused to stand by as Mečiar’s autocracy emerged, blocked several pro-corruption changes to laws and refused to appoint key Mečiar people to predetermined positions. For example, Ivan Lexa to the privatisation minister.
According to Oskar Fegyveres, a former member of the Slovak Information Service (SIS), and other findings of the investigation, it was the secret services led by Mečiar’s husband, Ivan Lexa, who participated in the kidnapping. Mečiar himself was supposed to have given his permission. The case was accompanied by numerous changes of investigation teams, intimidation of police officers and information campaigns. The kidnapping was also linked to the murder of Róbert Remiás, a former police officer and young lawyer who helped the crown witness Fegyveres with his escape abroad and communication. The murder was carried out by the underworld working with the SIS. The Crown Witness himself has repeatedly escaped assassination attempts abroad.
Despite the fact that the investigating police officers were threatened, or that someone placed a grenade in the investigator’s garden that did not explode, while the Member of Parliament who pressed for an investigation into the case had a grenade explode in the garden of the family home, there was a gradual investigation into the circumstances of the abduction. Even 13 people involved in the act were charged. They were not being investigated directly for the kidnapping but for related offences. However, the court upheld Vladimir Mečiar and dismissed the case, citing the amnesty.
Lexa (head of SIS): “And we’ll give the investigator another one, hey?”
Hudek (Minister of the Interior): “Well, I’ll kick him in the balls.”
Lexa: “So you’re gonna kick him in the balls tomorrow?! If you kick him in the balls, I’ll kiss you on the forehead.” (Both laugh)
Hudek: “I think it’s already decided. I gave the instructions today on how it should look like.”
Lexa: “And the regional one, you’re going to fuck him too, you know, ours?”
Hudek: “Gradually. I was suggesting that like this, you know …”
Lexa: “Sure.”
Hudek: “I think it’s going well now.”
Lexa: “Okay, this is good. What?”
Hudek: “You, I’m in a better mood.”
This is how communication at the highest level of the Slovak security forces took place in 1995. God’s mills were grinding too slowly in the case of Lexy and Mečiar. Both of them in 2023 were living in prosperity, which they bought for their families at the price of human suffering. Both survived the end of the life of the gravely ill Kovacs, and thanks to the affection of Fico’s Smer-SD party, to which many of Mečiar’s sponsors and members defected, the amnesties protected them. Seven parliamentary attempts to repeal the amnesties failed. They were cancelled only on the eighth attempt, at a time when most of the crimes related to the kidnapping of Kovacs Jr. were time-barred or “uninvestigatable.” Even in the remaining cases where investigations could continue, there have been changes in investigative teams or inaction by law enforcement and the judiciary.
