He had the bribe in his advertising bag. The former head of IT at the Ministry of Agriculture faces prosecution for corruption

It involved the purchase of hardware equipment and software licenses for the Ministry from the American company Oracle for the “Migration X86 – Oracle” project.

On March 31, 2022, during a personal search of Blašek, the police found a total of a quarter of a million crowns in five thousand banknotes in two brown notebooks – notebook covers with the inscription of the American software giant Oracle – stored in an advertising bag.

It reasonably follows from the findings of fact that the accused Blaško, according to the agreement with the accused Novotný, should have received the funds

The ministerial official defended himself by saying that he received these gift items on the same day at a business summit organized by Oracle in the Vienna House hotel near Anděl in Prague, where he was invited as a representative of the ministry, according to his words, as a substitute for a colleague.

“And he didn’t open any of them because he assumed they were marketing items,” the detectives quoted Blašek’s defense in the June resolution on the initiation of criminal prosecution, a copy of which is available to Právo. When asked by them, the official then stated that he did not know about the money hidden in a paper pocket on the inside of the laptop case boards.

However, according to the resolution, the police did not believe this claim. “The police authority found that such specific marketing items and cash were not distributed at the event in question, so the explanation of Oleg Blašek was evaluated by the police authority as false, not based on the truth, aimed at covering up the unauthorized receipt of such items and cash,” they had obviously criminals.

The former deputy rejects any kind of corruption, saying that there was no reason for it, because no other solution than concluding a custom contract was possible. According to him, the accusation may outwardly appear to be purposeful criminalization motivated by an effort to force him to testify falsely or to falsely accuse his former superior minister Toman.

“The accused does not feel guilty of the behavior described in the resolution to initiate criminal prosecution, especially because the act described in the resolution did not happen, he never demanded or was promised a bribe in connection with a public contract, as stated in the operative part of the resolution, and he never even knowingly accepted a bribe,” Blaško defended himself through his lawyer Radek Ondruš in the complaint. He pointed out that there is no record of the handing over of the bribe.

The now former head of the IT department also defended himself by saying that the police confiscated his bag with gift items, including the money stored in them, only a few hours after leaving the event. “It is completely improbable that if he knew that there was a bribe in the bag, he would not have at least checked the bag to see if the funds were actually there,” pointed out the contradiction of the defense attorney.

In addition, neither Blašek nor the accused sales representative of the Oracle company Richard Novotný (47) were found on the banknotes. The police have been prosecuting him since June for the crime of bribery, for which he faces one to six years in prison. Blaška then accuses the detectives of accepting a bribe and abusing the authority of an official, for which he could receive a sentence of between three and ten years behind bars.

According to the detectives, the handing over of the bribe was preceded by at least two meetings between the two men, at which Blaško allegedly made sure that he would receive the financial payment. On the contrary, Novotný allegedly promised that this would happen as soon as the contract was signed, no later than the end of last March. On the last day of March, the police found the money at Blašek’s. However, they did not charge the two suspects until June 5 this year.

Their subsequent complaints were decided by prosecutor Michal Fiala from the Supreme State Attorney’s Office, who unanimously dismissed them as unfounded. This happened only after more than four months from the start of the criminal prosecution, namely on October 24, which Blaška’s defense attorney considers an “unprecedented length of time”. In the meantime, the police managed to interview most of the witnesses.

“So far, not a single witness has confirmed even a part of the accusation,” defense attorney Ondruš pointed out this week, who, according to his words, assumed the current decision of the prosecutor, because he said Fiala had no other option. The actions taken so far, including interrogations, would not be valid.

However, in his resolution, the prosecutor finds the police officers right regarding the accusations. “In the given criminal case, all the legal conditions for the issuance of a decision to initiate criminal prosecution of both accused natural persons have been met, and it is appropriate that the defined act be the subject of further investigation,” Fiala wrote in the October resolution, stating that the police’s considerations on corruption He equates Blašek and Novotný and did not find obvious logical contradictions in them.

He added that from the mutual communication between the accused and their meetings, a reasonable conclusion can be drawn about the existence of an agreement between the two men aimed at obtaining a reward for Blašek.

“From the findings of fact, it reasonably follows that the accused Blaško, according to the agreement with the accused Novotný, was supposed to receive funds in connection with the procurement of a matter of general interest, specifically in connection with the executed implementation contract for the purchase of licenses and subsequent payment provided by the Ministry to suppliers on the basis of this contract,” he stated .

The defense attorney now wants to file a motion to have the chief prosecutor, Igor Stříž, supervise the subordinate’s progress. In response to the rejection of his complaint, Blaško himself said that he still feels innocent. “The original accusation was that I created an organized criminal group with people I either didn’t know at all or had seen once in my life ten to fifteen years ago,” wrote Práva Blaško this week.