Two working days were enough and the billboard, which had been standing illegally for several years at the D4 highway, disappeared. The large-scale advertising sign, the story of which was reported by Seznam Zprávy last Friday with a link to the politicians of the ANO movement, was removed by someone on Monday.
And just as no one has advocated for the banner itself, no one has advocated for its removal either.
“We have initiated administrative steps in the matter, but the physical enforcement was not at the initiative or at the expense of the ŘSD,” said Jan Rýdl, spokesman for the Directorate of Roads and Highways, when asked by the editors about the disposal of the sign.
According to his own words, the owner of the land, real estate entrepreneur Vladimír Beck, did not even initiate the removal. “I didn’t, it wasn’t mine either. Perhaps the one who glued it there?” he hypothesized regarding the demolition.
Beck has previously said that he does not benefit from the billboard, does not know who it belongs to, and initially did not even know of its existence.
Photo: Jiří Pšenička, Seznam Zpravy
The D4 highway with a billboard before the publication of the Seznam Zpráv article.
Photo: Jiří Pšenička, Seznam Zpravy
D4 highway without billboard after publication of Seznam Zpráv article.
As Seznam Zprávy described, before the elections in 2021, an advertisement of the ANO movement with leaders Andrej Babiš and Karel Havlíček hung on the same illegal sign near the exit near Mníšek pod Brdy for several weeks.
For at least the last year, this banner has been used under unspecified conditions by the company Bios from nearby Dobříš, whose director is MP for the ANO movement Tomáš Helebrant. “The Bios company has nothing to do with it,” said Helebrant after the sign was removed, objecting to Seznam Zprávy linking the matter to him and his political group.
In his opinion, the problem of illegal billboards is a matter for the region, in this case Středočeský. “The region should have solved it a long time ago. It is a mistake that the current governor (Petra Pecková for the STAN movement – note ed.) underestimated,” said Helebrant, who is the probable Central Bohemian leader of the ANO movement for the upcoming regional elections.
However, in this particular case, when the banner was installed in the highway zone, MP Helebrant is not right according to the available information.
It is a matter of the Ministry of Transport, which plays the role of a road administrative authority for highways, and also of the mentioned state enterprise Directorate of Roads and Highways. Zdeněk Jahn, the founder of the Facebook group “Join and tear it down”, who now works for the Ministry in the field of advertising regulation, told the list. As he also stated, the Central Bohemian Region would have to deal with it if it were lower class roads.
“Anyway, it’s good that the billboard is gone. It turns out that the bureaucratic route may not always be the most efficient,” Zdeněk Jahn said of the hasty demolition of the advertising equipment.
Tags: days black billboard disappeared highway
