The explanation of the Justice Minister in the corruption affair of Deputy Minister František Korbel is up for the "idiocy of the year" prize. After 13 years, the court has finally ruled that state institutions did indeed harm Dr. Uzunoglu. Police falsely charged him and deprived him of his liberty and property for almost three years while the state attorney was asleep. The state also manipulated and falsified evidence.
Among other matters, Uzunoglu continued to pay rent on his flats while he was in prison, completely unaware they were being used for private off-duty meetings by the investigating police officers of what was later to be called the famous "Berdych gang". Uzunoglu also paid the phone bills for calls through which the officers ordered pizza deliveries. A building he owned that included his archives was set on fire, and he also survived an attempt to poison him in prison. Thirteen years later, he has had to listen while an inane state prosecutor proposed he once again be considered guilty for charges that had been overturned long ago.
As the law requires, after his rehabilitation Uzunoglu had to negotiate his compensation with the Justice Ministry. He entered those negotiations and was subsequently visited by the Deputy Minister, otherwise an attorney, who offered to represent him through the law firm in which he is partner. The fee he proposed was conventional and not bad at all – 15 % of the sum awarded. You don’t have to try for much when billions are possibly at stake.
A somewhat simple response
Here we should note that Deputy Minister František Korbel is entrusted with managing the compensation department at the ministry. Therefore, he was proposing to litigate the demand for compensation against himself, as it were. Dr. Uzunoglu rejected his offer, drew attention to Korbel’s conflict of interest, and reported the affair to the ministry at a meeting that included a representative from the embassy of the country of which Uzunoglu is a citizen. Before Korbel learned that his activity had been reported to the other side, he managed send Dr. Uzunoglu several e-mails from his firm’s e-mail account.
Justice Minister Pospíšil has now give this rather simple response: "This is a matter of competing allegations. There was communication between them, but who offered what to whom cannot be proven."
Jan Urban
About the author| Jan Urban, journalist, historian, signatory to Charter 77
František Korbel , Deputy Justice Minister, from the Green Party
Dr.Yekta Uzunoglu, citizen of the Federal Republic of Germany , member of PEN – Club
www.uzunoglu.info
