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The clients of Prague lawyer Hana Suková, who lost a total of 153 million through embezzlement, took an unusual step: on Thursday, they filed a criminal complaint with the Czech Bar Association.
As Seznam Zprávy described in a series of articles and documented documents, the bar association already received disturbing indications in 2017 that attorney Suková was conducting suspicious transactions with clients’ money. Nevertheless, Suková was in office until 2022, when the police accused her of embezzlement.
The Chamber made two successive inspections of Hana Suková, and found no wrongdoing. But at the same time, the chamber refuses to publish detailed information about the progress of the inspections.
Robbed people promise from the criminal report that thanks to it the investigation will start and the police will officially obtain the documents from the checks. And that it will then become clear whether the Bar Association bears part of the blame for not excluding Suková in 2017.
“Based on the information available so far, there is a reasonable suspicion that the criminal activity of lawyer JUDr. Sukova was made possible by the Czech Bar Association, or by certain leading persons and members of the control board,” reads the criminal complaint obtained by Seznam Zprávy.
Who gets the documents?
The robbed clients think that the chamber did not do the earlier checks on the lawyer properly. And that’s why the machinations came to light only after five years – to the detriment of people who gave Hana Suková millions in so-called escrow when buying apartments, houses or land.
“To this day, the Chamber is keeping secret how the inspections took place. We hope the police will figure it out,” said Zuzana Reyne, one of the injured clients, who also speaks on behalf of the others.
In 2017, the Czech Bar learned that something suspicious was going on with Suková from official sources: from the Financial Analysis Office, which fights money laundering. From the office, she received detailed information about the escrow bank accounts from which Suková transferred money back and forth depending on where it was missing. She also collected them in cash.
“The police should investigate why no one thoroughly dealt with the initiative of the Financial Analysis Office. I think the whole thing is a failure of several institutions,” said Hana Kordová Marvanová, a senator and lawyer who represents some of the robbed clients.
A prosecuted colleague was checking
The Bar Association has been repeating since last year that it cannot publish details about inspections. The management of the chamber also claimed that Hana Suková submitted apparently falsified documents from the bank to the inspectors during the background check. So she fooled the controllers.
However, the chamber did not present proof of this.
“As part of the inspection, the escrow accounts were checked, which were marked in the FAÚ annotation, the audited lawyer provided documents with a complete transaction history for these escrow accounts, which did not contain any indications that the funds in the escrow accounts were disposed of in a manner other than in accordance with relevant custody agreements,” the chamber’s spokeswoman Iva Chaloupková responded earlier.
Lidové noviny wrote in March that one of the inspections at Suková’s house she commissioned lawyer Martin Grubner, prosecuted for tax evasion. According to the Czech Justice server, Grubner is currently also accused in another case – he allegedly told another lawyer about a bribe while performing an inspection, to which the bar association also sent him.
The list of reports in previous articles also described that there are also question marks surrounding the work of the police. The forensic scientist, who was put in charge of financial analysts in 2017, did nothing at all on the case. And he put it away from the table, saying that no crime had happened.
