Police shelve complaint over anti-Schwarzenberg ad in tabloid

Police have shelved a criminal complaint taken by the team of defeated candidate Karel Schwarzenberg over a full-page advertisement that appeared in the tabloid Blesk on the eve of the second and final round of a presidential election in January, the website Tyden.cz reported. The ad urged voters not to support Mr. Schwarzenberg, an aristocrat who spent much of his life in Austria, and highlighted his disagreement with the post-war expulsion of Czechoslovakia’s German populace. The candidate’s team said the advert contravened the electoral law. It was paid for by lawyer Vladimír Zavadil, who was a secret police officer under the Communist regime.