SPD Fined For Campaign Violations

Tomio Okamura SPD

Brno, June 20 (CTK) – The Czech Office Supervising Financial Management of Political Parties has imposed a 100,000-crown fine on the anti-EU populist Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) movement for four minor offences related to its election campaign, the Seznam Zpravy server has reported.

 

The SPD of Tomio Okamura was fined for mistakes in the campaign before the last October general election and the January 2018 Senate by-election in the Trutnov ward, east Bohemia.

 

The movement did not release the non-financial support in the form of promotion on the SPD web shop’s website three days before the general election at the latest and did not include these data in its report on the campaign funding submitted to the Chamber of Deputies .

 

The other two mistakes were made before the Senate by-election. The movement did not release a report on its campaign funding and did not send its accounting books to the office within the legal deadline.

 

The SPD reacted today saying that it will file a complaint against the fines. In addition, it will take legal steps against “the inappropriate and unlawful approach” of the supervisory office, SPD spokeswoman Michaela Dolenska wrote in a press release.

 

The office did not explicitly say in its press release which parties and movements in parliament had been fined, because the administrative proceedings are closed to the public. Nevertheless, a trustworthy source told Seznam Zpravy that it was the SPD.

 

The SPD insists that the leak of the information to the media had been intentional and that it proves that the office’s decision making is not independent.

 

The SPD is going to hire a lawyer’s office to seek the office’s ousting from the administrative proceedings whose closed character it has “flagrantly violated,” the SPD wrote.

 

The latest fine is another one imposed on the SPD by the supervisory office.

 

In February, it was given a 45,000-crown fine for an unlawful transaction in its election account.

 

At the end of January, the SPD too early transferred more than 600,000 crowns from its election account though the money had to be left there untouched for 180 days after the election result is released, that was till the end of April. The movement returned the sum to the election account then.

 

It originally faced a fine of up to 0.5 million crowns.