DO CZECHS WANT THEIR RULE OF LAW?

By Benjamin Kuras

Picture a Czech citizen whom the police charge, say, some time in March 1994, with an alleged criminal offence of, say, dodging import duty on, say, an imported car. As a result of these charges - unproven, only filed - the Citizen is denied a trading licence, and thus the right to earn a living in a private occupation. The charges relate to a used car which the Citizen had bought two years earlier in Germany, brought home, declared and paid duty based on the sales invoice. In the course of the investigation, several police officers visit Germany at the taxpayer's expense to look for evidence that the Citizen paid a lower import duty than he ought to have. Through extraordinary diligence and indefatigable investigative persistence, they find a second document of a sales agreement, issued at a different price, at a different date, and in a different name. This document contains two signatures of which one is later testified to be a forgery, the other inexplicable. From this, nevertheless, the Czech investigators deduce that the Citizen has committed the criminal offence of evading import duty. After three years of laborious detective work, Prague Police HQ rules to stop the investigation under par. 174 of the Criminal Code, issuing this explanation: "It could not be proven that the act had been committed by the accused. None of the witnesses are able to explain why two sales agreements were issued." One month later, state prosecution annuls this police ruling because "there were no legal grounds for it, it being in confusing and unsustainable, and cannot therefore be accepted in law." Within two months, the Citizen is charged with import duty evasion to the amount of 44,730 Kc. "The degree of social peril," states the indictment, "is judged above all by the significance of the fiscal interest of the State protected by the law with due economic discipline, which had been affected by the act of the accused," (whatever that might mean). The amount incurred to the taxpayer in the meantime by the investigative and travel activities of the police, requested in writing by the curious Citizen, is never quantified. Within another month - unprecedented in the usually slow process of Czech justice - the Citizen is sentenced to a fine of 60,000 Kc, or two months in jail if he fails to pay. The Citizen duly appeals, supplying information which proves that he could not have committed the offence, since on the date of the second sales bill, he was hundreds of miles away. His appeal points out several breaches of law by the investigators and the court. A year later - we are by now in March 1999 - he is acquitted of all charges. This time, the State prosecutor appeals and within three months, in June 1999, the case is returned to the first instance court for a review. One of the prosecution's chief witnesses has these replies to offer to both the prosecution and the defence lawyers: "I cannot remember whether it was just numbers we wrote down or took documents." "We had it arranged in advance, I don't know by whom, that the requested documents were ready for us." "Who instructed me thus, I don't remember." "Direct knowledge (of prices) I have none, just from hearsay." "I do not recall this detail exactly." "I really don't remember exactly." "I do not know exactly who notified me of this." "I do not recall any such details." "Or I may have made a mistake (in the date)." "I state that I do not remember exactly." Following two court sessions, in which no new evidence is presented by the prosecution, the Citizen is sentenced again to a fine by the same judge who had acquitted him earlier. Following two more appeals, the Citizen is finally, in May 2001, sentenced to a fine of 50,000 Kc or two months in jail. To make it stop looking like a Kafkaesque piece of fiction: The Citizen is one of the few Czech journalists worthy of the attribute "investigative". His name is Premysl Vachalovský, and his real crime is something which was unwittingly testified by the above quoted witness: "A suspicion had arisen against him of the criminal offence of endangering a service secret in connection with a leak of some confidential service matters." In 1993, Vachalovský, then a police inspector, found that Prague police were buying Mercedes cars at unfavourable terms from a German company named Helbig, operating in Prague. Later on, now as a journalist, he compiled a list of 123 German cars, distributed throughout the Czech Republic and Slovakia, with the total value of almost 7 million DEM. Many of these were cars which had disappeared from circulation in Western Europe and on which insurance had been paid out in Germany. Their recipients and users were high ranking Czech officials in politics, the police and large companies. Some of the cars were used as taxis for Prague hotels. The cars were passing through and stored in the premises of Prague police. The Helbig brothers, who owned the Prague-based company, were being prosecuted in Germany where they had caused damage of 12 million DEM to insurance houses and 50 million to Daimler-Benz. Prague police, who knew the Helbigs well, let them escape German justice to Asia, from where one Helbig was finally extradited to Germany, sentenced and jailed. In the Czech Republic, they are still enjoying a clean slate, and several companies registered in their names are still in business, happily and unhindered. Here, they only caused a negligible undeclared import damage of a mere 30 million Kc. Since leaving the police, and the rank of police major in 1994, Vachalovský has focused on tracing and publishing details of corruption in top circles: police chiefs, economic mafia, politicians - and has faced one lawsuit after another. A collector's gem among them is Foreign Minister Kavan's request for criminal prosecution against Vachalovsky for publishing a book of documents on the Minister's past. The demand is written on official ministerial stationary, and the lawyer representing Kavan against Vachalovsky is the official legal representative of the Syndicate of Journalists of which Vachalovsky is an elected official. Incidentally, the same lawyer who a few years ago represented me against Kavan - if you thought the case lacked a touch of comedy. Czech police, or more specifically, its Office of Documentation of the Investigation of the Crimes of Communism, issued Vachalovsky the following certificate in the year 2000: "Following a thorough search, were must confirm that under the communist regime, you were a target of persecution by government agencies. Selected methods were used against you which to this day enable former secret service officers, whose job brief was to undermine fundamental human rights and liberties, to discredit individuals who tried to prove the unlawfulness of their acts under the current Law No. 198/1993." As far as I know, Vachalovsky is bracing himself for the two months in jail. A storm of international media attention is about to descend on the Czech judiciary.

Benjamin Kuras is an Anglo-Czech writer, author of Czechs and Balances, As Golems Go, and Is there Life on Marx?
e-mail: benkuras@aol.com

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