News

The executive council of the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes is to meet on Tuesday afternoon to discuss controversy surrounding the election of its new director. The council had chosen historian Jiří Pernes to take up the post in mid-February after the former director Pavel Záček had been voted out of office for poor management. After his election, it emerged that Mr. Pernes took evening classes at a Marxist-Leninist institute of higher learning and that the StB, the Czech communist-era secret police, had considered him a potential candidate for collaboration. The news evoked a storm of controversy and the Social Democrats have accused the former director Pavel Záček of using the institute to glean information that could damage his successor.

The German discount grocery chain Lidl saw record sales of 906 million Czech crowns in the fiscal year of 2008/2009, bringing the company’s market share up by 12 percent. Lidl had seen losses of 52.5 million crowns the year before. The chain of grocery stores started operating in the Czech Republic in 2003 and to date, there are 210 locations of the store in the Czech Republic. Nine new outlets opened last year. Lidl is part of the German retail group Schwarz that also owns the hypermarket chain Kaufland.

According to data published by the Czech Credit Bureau, 929 Czech companies and individuals filed bankruptcy in the first two months of 2010 alone, an increase of over 120 percent as compared to last year. February saw the highest number of bankruptcies in a single month, with nearly 500 companies and individuals filing bankruptcy. The increase is especially pronounced as far as personal bankruptcies are concerned, with a growth in numbers by 229 percent.

The District Court of Hradec Králové has ruled that amnesties given in previous years apply to the Czech Republic’s oldest prisoner, Dr. Ludmila Brožová-Polednová. The court made the decision last week in a closed hearing and it was reported by the website Lidovky.cz on Monday. According to the website, the court’s spokesman said that, due to previous presidential and governmental amnesties, Dr. Brožová-Polednová must be absolved of six years of her sentence, which equals the term to which she was sentenced. The verdict is not yet effective; the state prosecutor in Hradec Králové has filed an appeal and the case will be dealt with by the Supreme Court in Prague.

The 88-year-old former communist prosecutor was imprisoned in 2009 for the judicial murder of Milada Horáková, a politician executed by the communist regime in 1950 after a show trial. Her attorney says the case is also being reviewed by the European Court for Human Rights in Strasbourg.