The media have recently written that the names of four Czech MPs appeared in the former communist military counter-intelligence (VKR) registration protocols.
All four denied any cooperation. Leschtina says the MPs in question, who might or might not cooperate with the VKR, may search in the files reconstructed by historians of the Institute for Totalitarian Regimes Studies (USTR). In the 1990s, unofficial lists of communist secret police agents were published, but the files were not available then and not even experts had access to the Interior Ministry archives, Leschtina writes. This is a positive change, but the USTR is yet to take one important step: to publish the files on the officers who Czech deputy PM Cunek accepts financial audit results ...
Czech Cunek says inspectors investigate info leak from his case ...
Czech deputy PM sponsored charity while being on welfare - press ... worked for the former communist secret police (StB), not only information on agents and cooperators, Leschtina points out in HN. It is good news that a court decided that a tabloid daily must pay compensation to parents of a child victim of a car accident for publishing a picture of the boy's half-burnt corpse, Tomas Nemecek writes elsewhere in HN. This is serious warning to the media, he says. A half-burnt body has no value as a piece of information and it infringes upon the right to dignity of the deceased person, Nemecek writes. The picture was released by the daily Sip on February 1, 2006. The boy's parents demanded compensation of one million crowns each, but the High Court in Prague ruled that they should get 50,000 crowns each, Nemecek recalls. The fact that the daily has been fined is important. The dead are not toys to play with, he says. It seems that businessman Roman Vaskuj who was sentenced for tax evasion on Tuesday and who presented himself as an ardent supporter of minister Jiri Cunek in Cunek's corruption case had his own motives to do so and Cunek has nothing in common with him, Martin Zverina writes in Lidove noviny. Vaskuj tried to bribe a female witness who claimed Cunek took a bribe when he was a regional politician. Vaskuj probably wanted to create the impression that he worked for or was at least backed by Cunek who is Czech deputy prime minister and Christian Democrat (KDU-CSL) leader, Zverina writes. Vaskuj hoped that it could help him in his criminal case. He might have been partly successful as he was sent to 7.5 years in prison, while the punishment could have been stricter. (USD1=15.048 crowns)
(Ceske Noviny)
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