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INFO RUEHZL/EUROPEAN POLITICAL COLLECTIVE

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 PRAGUE 000160 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV KCOR EZ
SUBJECT: CZECH CORRUPTION: HOW MUCH IS TOO MUCH FOR VOTERS? 
 
¶1. (SBU) SUMMARY: Less than a year has passed since Czech 
Prime Minister Stanislav Gross (CSSD) was forced out of 
office by questions about the source of money used to pay for 
his private residence, and succeeded by current PM Jiri 
Paroubek (CSSD). Since that time several others in the 
cabinet, parliament and government service have been forced 
to resign because of alleged ethical misconduct. In addition, 
the nation's top prosecutor and her deputy have resigned in 
disgust, saying there was no political will to fight 
corruption. There seems to be general agreement that 
corruption is a serious and widespread problem. Whether 
officials feel threatened enough to change their rules and 
practices, or whether the public is incensed enough to vote 
for new, untainted parties, remains to be seen. The main 
opposition party (ODS) is also dogged by persistent 
allegations of corruption. The latest political poll shows 
surprising support for the Greens, an extraparliamentary 
party that is seen as a promoter of clean government. If the 
Greens, or one of the other small, untainted parties receive 
enough votes in this summer,s general election to make it to 
parliament, this would have a profound impact on the makeup 
of the next coalition government. END SUMMARY 
 
¶2. (U) Paroubek took over as Prime Minister on April 25, 
¶2005. Less than two weeks later, his long-time assistant and 
newly appointed government spokesperson, Veronika Skorepova, 
resigned after being accused of padding her resume. In 
August, the Czech TV station Nova ran a tape of Zdenek 
Dolezel, head of the Prime Minister,s office, in which 
Dolezel seemed to be asking for a bribe from a Polish 
lobbyist. The Prime Minister eventually sacked Dolezel. 
Agriculture Minister Petr Zgarba (CSSD) stepped down in 
November when it came to light that he had allowed, perhaps 
unknowingly, valuable public land to be transferred to 
speculators. Last month, Michal Kraus (CSSD) stepped down 
after nearly two decades in parliament when it came out that 
he had participated in a business deal in Ghana with a 
convicted swindler. Kraus, who was head of his party,s 
parliamentary club and head of parliament,s budget 
committee, gave inconsistent explanations of the trip before 
finally resigning from all of his official positions. In the 
latest scandal, Jan Mares, the head of the government office 
that conducts security screenings, resigned February 8, after 
he was overheard on a police wiretap of a criminal gang, 
discussing ways of acquiring contacts at the President's 
office. 
 
¶3. (U) It is unclear whether the normally tolerant Czech 
electorate will see corruption, admittedly widespread, as an 
important election issue and vote for the Greens or some 
other new party promoting cleaner government, or whether an 
increase in the coverage of scandals could lead to greater 
support for the Communists, who, because they have been kept 
outside the corridors of power, are still untainted by 
corruption.  So far, public opinion polls show little sign of 
erosion in public support for ODS and CSSD, the two main 
parties, and the two most often accused of corruption. But 
these same polls do suggest some slight increase in support 
for two extraparliamentary parties that are still perceived 
as clean: the Greens and the newly formed alliance of SNK-ED 
merging the followers of former Foreign Minister Josef 
Zielenec and former Prague Mayor Jan Kasl. 
 
¶4. (U) One theory making the rounds in Prague's 
conspiratorial circles is that, because of the upcoming 
general election, corruption is being used, with the 
cooperation of a partisan media, as a pretext to eliminate 
rivals. There has been much speculation, both in private and 
in public, that former Prime Minister and CSSD party chief 
Milos Zeman is behind the Gross and Kraus resignations. Three 
years ago Zeman expected a CSSD-led parliament to elect him 
as president, but some members of a relatively centrist bloc 
within the party withdrew their support, allowing former ODS 
chief Vaclav Klaus to be chosen.  The argument that is 
frequently made is that Zeman is taking revenge on those who 
he feels deserted him, and also possibly preparing for 
another run at the presidency in 2008. 
 
¶5. (U) The Embassy spoke with Czech journalist Jaroslav 
Kmenta, who broke both the Gross and Kraus stories. Kmenta 
participated in a USIA International Visitor Program on 
investigative journalism in the mid 1990s. He attributes many 
of his successes to things learned on that trip, such as the 
value of open sources for information that can lead to major 
scoops.  In the case of Prime Minister Gross, Kmenta went 
through public records at the housing registry and found the 
cost of the apartment the Prime Minister was living in. He 
and colleagues conducted estimates of the money the 
thirty-something Premier could have made in his entire 
lifetime and determined that the cost of the apartment 
exceeded his possible income. In Prague, where politics can 
be murky and convoluted, many suspected a frame-up. But 
 
PRAGUE 00000160  002 OF 003 
 
 
Kmenta assured post that it was a simple and at the time, 
relatively innocent question, &Where did the money for the 
apartment come from?" As history has shown, the awkward, 
inconsistent and scarcely credible answers that Gross gave to 
this question led to his resignation. 
 
¶6. (U) In the Kraus case, Kmenta told post that during the 
uneventful slow days of the late summer, editors suggested he 
try to liven things up by going to prison and interviewing 
prominent convicts who had fallen out of the headlines since 
their incarceration.  During one such interview, with 
fraudster Frantisek Rigo, it came out that Rigo had made a 
business trip to Ghana with Michal Kraus. Kmenta denies that 
he was tipped off, or that politics played any role in the 
uncovering of either story. 
 
¶7. (SBU) Government officials who fight corruption, on the 
other hand, say politics plays too much of a role in the 
prosecution of official wrongdoing. State Supreme Prosecutor 
Marie Benesova left her post in September, 2005, after nearly 
six years of leading the fight against corruption and 
organized crime. In December, 2005, her former Deputy, 
Jaroslav Fenyk, also resigned. Both have cited insufficient 
will to fight organized crime and corruption, as well as 
political interference in the prosecution of high profile 
cases, as the main reasons for their departures. Benesova 
told post that she thought it would take two generations to 
improve the current situation. She told the Embassy she feels 
democracy itself is endangered because there is no political 
will to fight corruption or put an end to the involvement of 
all political parties in corruption cases. On a related note, 
Benesova told us she herself might become a candidate in the 
June elections on the SNK-ED ticket being led by former 
Prague Mayor Jan Kasl. It is possible that if corruption 
becomes an election issue and if Benesova, perhaps the 
country,s best known corruption fighter joins the right-of 
center SNK-ED party, now polling at slightly more than 2.5%, 
her candidacy could help the party get over the 5% threshold 
into parliament and shift the outcome from a socialist 
victory to a conservative victory. Similarly, the Greens, who 
have never been a part of the government of the Czech 
Republic, polled their highest ever this month, at 4.8%. If 
corruption continues to receive prominent coverage in the 
national media, that party, which has already said that it 
would join any non-communist alliance, could significantly 
change the composition of the next government. 
 
¶8. (U) Paroubek has done an adequate job, at least so far, of 
defusing criticism by expeditiously sacking any party member 
connected to a scandal. He has also promised to set up a 
bipartisan commission to make legislative and policy 
recommendations to fight corruption, if he is reelected. ODS, 
which should have been in a position to capitalize on the 
negative publicity aimed at its rival, the Social Democrats, 
has instead misplayed its hand and hasn't benefited. The best 
example of this might be the case of Vladimir Dolezal, an ODS 
parliamentarian accused of soliciting a bribe of 
approximately USD35,000 from a Prague businessman. The 
scandal flared up when the accusation was made public last 
fall, then dragged through the papers last December when 
parliament debated and ultimately stripped Dolezal of his 
immunity before referring the case to the police. The story 
was given fresh legs three weeks later when Dolezal resigned 
from parliament, and a final shot three days later when he 
stepped down from the board of the state debt agency. Another 
example of a tactical error involves ODS chief Mirek 
Topolanek who was accused a year ago of offering Zdenek 
Koristka, a wavering coalition parliamentarian, USD 400,000 
and an ambassadorship in exchange for not supporting the 
coalition in a vote of no confidence. Rather than letting the 
issue fade quietly from the news, Topolanek chose to bring a 
civil suit against Koristka, thereby ensuring that the case 
would stay in the news. One Topolanek aide told post that 
Topolanek had been "exhausted" by the case and was going to 
end up spending more time on this one issue than any other in 
the year before the general election. 
 
¶9. (SBU) Although the ruling Social Democrats have done 
little to end corruption, with slightly more than three 
months to election day, polls indicate Prime Minister 
Paroubek will probably get his wish for a minority CSSD 
government.  But if either the Greens or Kasl,s European 
Democrats were to receive at least 5%, the minimum required 
for entry to parliament, they would have roughly a dozen 
seats and would make it possible for other parties, such as 
the Civic Democrats and the Christian Democrats, to form a 
majority government. Paroubek, who follows the polls very 
closely, is aware of this threat. In January he told party 
insiders to be on the lookout for environmental projects that 
would help CSSD siphon support from the Greens. Whether the 
new, untainted parties can draw enough first-time voters, 
alienated voters, and non-partisan voters who have simply had 
 
PRAGUE 00000160  003 OF 003 
 
 
enough of the incumbents, will depend to a certain extent on 
how many more scandals come to light between now and the 
election, and whether the Czech electorate will continue to 
shrug them off. 
CABANISS