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Police are investigating 51 people in connection with allegations of corruption at the Czech Defence Ministry, and fraudulent tenders worth more than 300 million crowns (13.5 million USD). On Friday, a Defence Ministry spokesperson confirmed that a number of tenders dating from 2005 were being looked into. Andrej Čírtek admitted that one third of the accused were former employees of the ministry, though none of those implicated worked for the ministry any more, he said. The other individuals being investigated all came from private enterprise. The tenders in question all related to smaller-scale construction and maintenance of ministry properties.

Police have received five weapons as part of an ongoing firearms amnesty that, they say, were used in violent crime. An amnesty on illegal firearms has been running since the beginning of February in the Czech Republic and is set to last until July. On Friday, a spokesperson said that following forensic tests police were investigating the owners of five of the weapons handed in. So far, some 755 guns have been given to the police as part of the amnesty. This is the third amnesty of its type in the Czech Republic in recent years. Over 3000 illegal weapons were handed over to the police in 1996 and then 2003, including a WWII Soviet-made anti-tank rifle and a British sub-machine gun dating from the same period.

The Head of the Czech Lower House, Miloslav Vlček, would like to fine MPs who are unable to explain their absence from sessions of Parliament, reports Mladá fronta Dnes on Saturday. The reaction to Mr Vlček’s proposal has been lukewarm, writes the daily. The head of the Lower House would like to fine deputies who are absent from more than 30 percent of parliamentary sessions without good reason. He proposes the money will be docked from MPs’ expense accounts, which can amount to 40,000 crowns (1,800 USD) a year. Mr Vlček will bring the proposal to Parliament in March. So far, deputies have questioned how the system would be monitored.

Interior Minister Ivan Langer has come out in criticism of those at the head of the Czech football association and called for a change in leadership. In Saturday’s edition of the newspaper Sport, Mr Langer attacked FA bosses for preparing insufficiently for a change in the way stadiums are policed. When the Czech Gambrinus Liga resumed after the winter break last week, football grounds’ security was supposed to be taken care of by the clubs themselves, and not the Czech police. But, after violence erupted at a match in Brno, the police were forced to intervene and five arrests were made. On Saturday, Ivan Langer said that if the Czech FA had prepared better for the change, police intervention would not have been necessary. The head of the football association Pavel Mokrý responded that it was not his organization which was to blame and called Mr Langer’s comments ‘inadmissible state intervention’ into the FA and its board.