Juchelka subsidy scandal in Prague 8: ANO deputy chair's daughter

The conflict-of-interest scandal that, according to the Supreme Audit Office (NKÚ), will cost the Czech budget tens of millions of crowns turns out to be linked to senior ANO officials even more closely than thought. ANO deputy chair Robert Králíček has surfaced in the story: journalists have found out that his 25-year-old daughter quietly became manager of the “rescued” children's groups.

It all began when Labour Minister Aleš Juchelka (ANO) and Prague 8 deputy mayor Radomír Nepil (ANO) hired the same adviser. For the district, she was supposed to obtain tens of millions in European subsidies for children's groups, and for the ministry, to oversee the payout of those very subsidies. So the woman was in a conflict of interest, and the projects she touched cannot be paid for from European money. Despite the auditors' criticism, the Juchelka ministry will pay the money out of its own budget.

The deputy chair's daughter in a district organization

Králíček insists it is a coincidence and says he did not help his daughter, who recently graduated in sport and physical education management, with her career. He refused to speak by phone and sent his answer by text message: “My daughter is an adult and independent person who decides about her professional life herself. She joined the Osmička pro rodinu organization of her own accord and after an interview. I took no part in her hiring and I did not intervene for anyone.” The daughter did not answer questions.

After the journalists' inquiries, Králíčková hid a year-old photo from the ANO campaign before the parliamentary elections on Facebook. In it she stands with her father, an MP, and the hand of Prague 8 deputy mayor Nepil rests on her shoulder; Nepil oversees the entire children's group agenda at the town hall and is behind the project. In January, Nepil and Minister Juchelka cut the ribbon at the opening of one of the groups, and he boasted that his town hall had received 65 million crowns from the package of European subsidies.

Nepil has long stopped answering reporters' calls, but when they phoned him from another number, he picked up. “She went through the standard selection process that was held. So that's about it,” he said of Králíčková, and hung up on questions about the photo and about his acquaintance with her and her father.

Králíčková's name does not appear on the official website of Osmička pro rodinu, a budget organization of the town hall. She is listed only on the pages for parents where applications are submitted, with an official staff photo and the title of manager of children's groups and family clubs. The town hall's spokesperson replied that Prague 8 has no information and did not respond to a request to obtain it from the subordinate organization.

The organization's director, Kateřina Hrazanková, who also heads the town hall's legal department, answered only some of the questions. From her words it follows that there was no selection process, contrary to Nepil's claim: a budget organization is not required to hold one when hiring. But Hrazanková insists that politicians did not interfere in the choice and that she personally conducted the interview with Králíčková. She did not reveal what exactly Králíčková does.

Who will pay tens of millions

It is unclear where the state will find tens of millions for Prague 8's new children's groups. The not yet public draft of the NKÚ report shows that the ministry is ready to cover the costs, and it has already sent tens of millions. Yet in the NKÚ experts' view, the Prague 8 district is also a party to the problem, and the ministry has not legally explained why it did not leave the payment of the projects to the district. The auditors remind that subsidy applicants who chose a person with a conflict of interest to obtain the money bear part of the blame.

“The recipients represented by the employee did not report the risk of a conflict of interest, although in their application they had pledged to inform immediately of any changes,” the NKÚ document says. The problem concerns six projects, two of them Prague 8 children's groups, to which the EU was originally to send more than 60 million crowns. Juchelka and Nepil cut the ribbon when adviser Alexandra Semancová had already been working for the minister for a week, and Juchelka admitted that she had been recommended by Prague 8, which paid her private firm hundreds of thousands of crowns for obtaining subsidies.

ANO will most likely continue to run Prague 8. On Monday, negotiators announced that Andrej Babiš's movement had struck a deal with STAN and TOP 09 and with ODS and the Christian Democrats, bypassing the winning movement “8žije”, which had tried to deal with the Semancová case at an extraordinary council meeting. Who will ultimately pay, Nepil does not want to say: “I have no information at the moment,” he says, and refers to Juchelka's ministry.

Around Prague, based on reporting by seznamzpravy.cz