EU Corruption Watchdog Launches Probe Into Vratislav Mynář

The European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) is investigating a six million crown subsidy granted to a company owned by Vratislav Mynář, Seznam reports. Czech authorities have been investigating the allocation of support that Mynář’s company received in 2011 for the reconstruction of a boarding house in Osvětimanech in the Uherské Hradiště region. In February, the police accused Mynár of damaging the EU’s financial interests. Mynář denies that he has committed a crime, considers his prosecution to be non-standard and influenced by media pressure.

“This issue is pending a police investigation and an investigation of the European Office for the fight against fraud,” said Svašek. Kirill gels from OLAF’s press department told the server that is generally silent on cases that office investigates. Mynář queries the server responded.

OLAF generally deals with cases where, inter alia, it is examined whether there has been an error in the granting of subsidies and the aid already paid could be returned to the European Union. In the Czech Republic, the Supreme Public Prosecutor’s Office is in charge of communication with OLAF, but its spokesman Petr Malý also did not want to comment on whether the case of the subsidy for Clever Management was handed over to this European office, the server wrote.

The police accused one of President Miloš Zeman’s closest collaborators of damaging the financial interests of the European Union and of subsidy fraud in February. Police officers, as before, the inspection of the subsidy office claim that Mynář did not state truthfully in the application for the subsidy that the same building had previously received a subsidy from the Ministry of Education. The Chancellor filed a complaint against the resolution to initiate the prosecution, but the supervising public prosecutor rejected it. The company Clever Management has already been asked by the Czech subsidy office ROP Central Moravia to return the subsidy to the boarding house, but Mynář as its owner refused.