Brno-Stred District Town Hall was raided by the organised crime squad on Tuesday. Photo credit: KK / Brno Daily.
Brno, Oct 5 (CTK) – The Olomouc High Prosecutor’s Office (VSZ) has announced the arrest of eight people on suspicion of organised crime, in the wake of a police raid at Brno-Stred District Town Hall on Tuesday. According to aktualne.cz, those detained include influential Civic Democrat (ODS) politician Otakar Bradac.
The eight suspects are being investigated for participation in an organised criminal gang, for accepting bribes for the benefit of the gang, and for abuse of power, VSZ wrote on its website.
The case relates to the Brno-Stred District Town Hall and the allocation of municipal flats.
The Organised Crime Squad (NCOZ) raided the town hall on Tuesday, detaining eight people including Bradac, who, according to aktualne.cz, is an acquaintance of Justice Minister Pavel Blazek (ODS).
PM Petr Fiala’s ODS is the senior governing coalition party in both the national government and Brno City Hall, and is a part of the coalition in charge of Brno-Stred district council.
VSZ has not said for now whether those detained have been released.
“With regard to the ongoing steps of prosecution, we cannot answer other questions. We will release more information as soon as the procedural situation enables it,” High Prosecutor Radim Danhel told CTK.
On Tuesday, Monika Lukasova Spilkova, the head of the Brno-Stred Town Hall control committee, told CTK that she had highlighted discrepancies in the allocation of flats, as well as suspicious flat swaps and renting, for a long time. Flats were allocated, for example, to the family members and friends of politicians, who jumped the queue of long-waiting applicants, she said.
In 2019, the so-called Stoka affair surfaced in the Brno-Stred district. The police uncovered an organised group including local politicians from the ANO movement, town officials and businesspeople, which was involved in criminal activity related to the district’s public procurement. The court sentenced those involved in May, imposing the maximum sentence of 9.5 years in prison on former Brno-Stred deputy mayor Jiri Svachula (ANO), who was convicted alongside eight other people and two companies.
