The clients of the prosecuted lawyer Hana Suková filed a criminal complaint with the Czech Bar Association. State associations of lawyers suspect intentional or negligent money laundering, or other criminal acts in connection with the execution and control of attorney deposits.
The Czech Bar Association objected to accusations that it participates in the legalization of proceeds from criminal activity. She emphasized that she is not a participant in the relationship between the client and the lawyer. The police are prosecuting Suková for embezzlement of 153 million crowns.
“The last hope to come to an agreement and find a joint solution to the current situation, i.e. amicably, has gone out. The criminal complaint was filed today, May 9, 2024, addressed to the High Prosecutor’s Office,” said the representative of the victims Susan Reyne. According to her, it prompted the injured clients to file a report “disillusionment” from the seminar that took place in the House of Representatives last week on the issue of attorney’s trusts.
“We have recently learned from the speech of the secretary of the Czech Bar Association, Petr Čáp, that the Czech Bar Association considers the current method of securing attorney deposits to be satisfactory and that it does not see its failures as a systemic problem. We have heard him continue to downplay the embezzlement with the rhetoric of individual failures,” Reyne wrote.
Monday, October 16, 2023, 7:00 p.mCrime stories
During the investigation of embezzlement committed by a Prague lawyer and her paralegal, criminal investigators have already recorded 44 entities that the pair robbed. In total, the women earned nearly 153 million crowns. The police are still investigating what the money was used for.
“The main thing that is completely disappointing is that the Czech Bar Association constantly talks in its press releases about the will to change the law and restore clients’ trust in the security of attorney trusts. Instead, it was clear from the presentation at the seminar that they are trying to throw any proposed changes off the table.” she added.
“At the moment, we do not officially know about the criminal complaint directed against the chamber and we do not know its content. For this reason too, we will not comment on him through the media,” responded the spokeswoman of the Czech Bar Association Iva Chaloupková.
“In the last two years, the board of the Czech Bar Association has repeatedly tightened the status regulation, which governs the obligations of lawyers when carrying out attorney deposits. Currently, the chamber is actively participating in multilateral negotiations at the Ministry of Justice on legislative measures that should lead to an increase in the security and transparency of attorney escrows, for example on the possibility of breaking bank secrecy at the request of the chamber for the needs of the escrow control. wrote Chaloupková.
The police previously said that they are registering 44 clients of Suková who have lost their money. The Prague lawyer often deprived them of their life savings. The damages point to the fact that the Czech Bar Association was not able to set up a system that would effectively prevent embezzlement of money from lawyers’ trusts. According to them, the Chamber is thus jointly responsible for the damage caused.
People use legal escrow, for example, when buying real estate. The custodian – for example, a person buying a house – deposits the money with the lawyer, which the lawyer will pay to the seller on the basis of a written contract only if specified conditions are met, for example after deposit in the real estate register. The lawyer must deposit the money in a special account separate from his property and must not dispose of it otherwise than the contract allows.
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