Czech minister Juchelka and “obnoxious journalism”: 83m crown loss

Labour and Social Affairs Minister Aleš Juchelka (ANO) snapped on Monday at a reporter who tried to stop him in a corridor with a voice recorder: “You are doing obnoxious journalism.” The journalist wanted an answer to a simple question — where the minister will find the money to cover a multimillion-crown hole left by the conflict-of-interest scandal involving his adviser Alexandra Semancová.

What the audit found

The Supreme Audit Office has also identified a conflict of interest in the Semancová case. The draft audit report states that the state budget incurred “originally unforeseen costs totalling 82,988,686 crowns”. The minister pulled the projects in question out of the European subsidy programme and now keeps repeating that Czechia has not lost any EU money. But in practice, the Czech budget will have to pay for them.

A ban from parliament and other investigations

The reporter has been banned from the Chamber of Deputies for three months because he filmed the minister’s coalition partner there. He may attend government press conferences, but when he wants to ask the prime minister a question, he is not given the floor. That leaves corridors and lifts.

The investigative team’s weekly newsletter also mentions other stories:

The “credit union” case. Three years on, the team returned to the case of a credit union linked to the Fiala cabinet: the police investigation ended with a fine of 30 million crowns.

19 billion for Agrofert. The state-owned company Čepro long concealed how much it paid the holding outside public registers. By the end of last year, companies of the holding had received more than 19 billion crowns without a tender, of which 10.4 billion came while Andrej Babiš was prime minister for the first time and, under final court rulings, in a conflict of interest.

A businessman and a donor. Jiří Vlk, the largest donor to the Motorists last year, built unauthorised structures on his son’s land, according to the editorial team, and they are used by airlines run by his father.

A motor influencer’s debts. Racing driver and Formula 1 commentator Josef Král, whose face appears on České spořitelna bank cards, is barely repaying his multimillion-crown debts.

Election results. In the municipal elections, a leader who had inherited a quarter of a billion crowns failed, as did people linked to the lobbyist Roman Janoušek.

Around Prague, based on reporting by seznamzpravy.cz