President Klaus denies allegations of corrupt presidential pardon

Czech President Václav Klaus has come out strongly against allegations that the agenda of granting presidential pardons was corrupt. Earlier this week, the weekly Respekt reported on a pardon that might have been bought from the president’s office for an ex-police officer who was to serve two years in jail for corruption. While President Klaus vigorously denied these claims, the police are looking into the case, and many believe presidential pardons should be much more transparent.

Radka Kadlecová, photo: Czech Television

Presidential pardons in the Czech Republic can be a sensitive issue, especially when they contradict the popular perception of justice. During his term as president, Václav Havel granted several controversial pardons which people felt were influenced by his relationship with those who received them.

But this case is different. Respekt magazine on Monday reported on the case of a former police officer, Radka Kadlecová, who in 2009 was sentenced to two years in jail for accepting bribes. But she suffered a nervous breakdown just before she was supposed to start serving her sentence – and told her psychiatrist that a pardon had been bought for her.

The doctor included this in his report, adding that the ex-policewoman specifically said president’s advisors received bribes. Another witness, quoted in the magazine report, is the mayor of Chyše, the town where the respected police officer lives; he wrote a letter to the president’s office supporting her petition for a pardon. But when they later met, the police officer said the plea had been a mere formality as the pardon had already been paid for.

Václav Klaus, photo: Archive of the Czech Government

President Václav Klaus reacted to the report with open fury.

“I am incredibly outraged by what this criminal weekly Respekt has done. Depreciating and defiling the institute of presidential pardons in this manner is devastating for me.

“It’s a difficult agenda and we devote a lot of time to it, reading hundreds and thousands of verdicts and petitions for pardon, repeatedly considering whether or not to grant it, that’s difficult work. Their attempt to discredit all this totally offends me and I really don’t know what to do about it.”

Animosity between the weekly Respekt and Václav Klaus has a long history but the president’s office made no attempt to prove the allegations wrong.

One of the authors of the report, Petr Třešňák, says there is no evidence the pardon had been bought but strong suspicions remain. While it’s unlikely that the head of state would be cashing in on the pardon himself, Mr Třešňák says if the case was corrupt, the president must have known about it.

Photo: Barbora Kmentová

“What we know is that President Klaus says that [granting pardons] is really his personal decision. So if there is corruption, I can’t imagine he wouldn’t know that this case was somehow manipulated, that it would be totally beyond him. In my opinion, that’s impossible.”

The latest controversial pardon might eventually lead to a change of the system. While the opposition Social Democrats have asked the president to release all documents relevant to the case, the coalition TOP 09 party suggests that in the future, the president’s decision to grant a pardon should be approved by the government as well.