Former Social Democrat MP Petr Wolf, who has fled the Czech Republic, has applied for political refugee status in Paraguay, where a court has already rejected his request to be transferred to house arrest, according to reports from the Odkryto server yesterday, citing the Paraguayan daily ABC.
Wolf was sentenced to six years in prison in the Czech Republic for subsidy fraud. The Foreign Ministry is seeking his extradition.
Wolf requested to serve his house arrest at a property in the suburbs of the capital Asuncion, which he offered as bail during the court hearing. However, the judge rejected his request and Wolf remains in custody.
A manhunt for Wolf was launched in the Czech Republic in January 2013, and police officers announced in 2019 that they had tracked him down in Paraguay. He was arrested at the end of September 2024, which the police said was the result of a targeted search and intensive international police cooperation through Interpol, with significant input from officers from Paraguay, Argentina and several departments. According to the server, Wolf was carrying a Mexican passport in the name of Ian Robertson.
Although the Czech Republic does not have an extradition treaty with Paraguay, extradition can be requested on the basis of “assurances of reciprocity.” The Czech Ministry of Justice asked Paraguay to extradite Wolf in 2016. “Our colleagues are in very close contact with the Paraguayan prosecutor, and a meeting took place last week,” Daniel Drake, the spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, told Odkryto.
Wolf was a member of parliament from 2006 to 2010. He was elected for the Social Democrats but later left the party. In 2012, a court found him guilty of defrauding the Environment Ministry, from which he received subsidies based on inaccurate and false information. Together with his wife Hana, he received CZK 11 million for two projects between 2005 and 2007. He used part of the money to cover his own costs, and the projects were copied from the Internet.
The court sentenced Wolf to five years in prison and a fine of CZK 1 million. The High Court in Olomouc increased Wolf’s sentence to six years and fined him CZK 5 million.
Hana Wolfova was also sentenced to a three-year suspended sentence and a fine of CZK 1 million. Wolf wrote on his website at the time that he considered the court’s decision wrong and unfair. He fled to avoid prison, and the police launched a manhunt for him.
Wolf and his wife paid the fine in instalments. The money kept coming into the court’s account even while he was on the run, paid by Wolfova.
