Brno City Hall saw multiple raids in October. Photo credit: TMA / BD.
Brno, Nov 5 (CTK) – Businessman Michal Horky, who has been remanded in custody since the October police raids in Brno, has confessed in the case of taking control of the municipal sand quarry company, Piskovna Cernovice, and wants to cooperate with the police, according to a report by daily Pravo, published yesterday.
Two representatives of the sand quarry, Jiri Novotny (CSSD) and Jiri Hason (KDU-CSL) also confessed in the case.
Horky admitted the existence of an organised criminal enterprise, and that Novotny received a bribe of CZK 4.5 million.
The Czech police department fighting organised crime arrested 10 people during a raid in Brno on 18 October, and seven of them were then taken into custody.
Czech media reported two branches of this criminal case. The first is the attempt to take control of Piskovna Cernovice. In the second branch, Horky and his criminal group fraudulently took over residential buildings and flats via bribes and then sold them for profit. The police consider Horky the key member of the criminal operation, according to earlier media reports.
As part of a raid over the allocation of municipal flats on 4 October, the police questioned 30 people and searched 28 houses and other premises. The police also contacted Brno former deputy mayor Petr Hladik (KDU-CSL), who has been nominated for environment minister, and visited his office. Hladik said he was neither charged nor arrested.
KDU-CSL continue to support the nomination of Hladik as environment minister, to replace Anna Hubackova (KDU-CSL), who stepped down for health reasons. The ministry is temporarily headed by Deputy Prime Minister and KDU-CSL leader Marian Jurecka. Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala (ODS) said he believed the situation around Hladik would become clear this month.
