Bribing citizens

Czech "government" and Czech citizens

Press release of the Czech Strasbourg Committe
24.4.2004

The following story is about Czech "government" publicly confirming to offer money to "selected" Czech citizens, who made it to the Strasbourg Court for Human Rights, in exchange for withdrawal of their cases. That is to citizens who a l m o s t made it, as their claims have been blocked, or disposed of "upon receipt" – illegally and in secret, behind the official scenes – by the Czech staff over there.

The going behind-the-scenes practice of offering compensation in exchange for withdrawal to selected individuals – in exchange for "participation" of the Czech representatives in the compensation paid, as confirmed and documented in a number of cases – has now been made available to 25 selected ones, the Czech paper's report says

Are among those "selected" also people of the Czech Strasbourg Committe who got uncomfortable with the corruption of the Czech staff of ECHR and began to protest loudly?

This sudden "transparency", so obviously missleading, may perhaps sound like "progress" to some, yet is nothing but a(nother) Pyrrhic victory: Who pays for this corrupt schemes - feeding their already more than well fed "representatives", here those within the ECHR – are the Czech taxpayers themselves.

The Czech "government" is very interested to have as little cases with the ECHR as possible. And perhaps even more interested to close as many cases as possible before Czechs get access to the EU court(s) as from the 1 May 2004 on, in a couple of days.

Re & Fwd:

Cabinet offers compensation for long court proceedings – press

Prague (CTK, 24.04.2004) – The Czech government has offered combined compensation to 25 people who have complained about slow court proceedings in the Czech Republic at the European Court in Strasbourg, the daily Mlada fronta Dnes writes today.

According to estimates, the compensation will require millions of crowns, the paper says.
The government thus decided to take a historically unique step as only individuals have so far received such offers, the paper says.
"It is true that we have never in the past made an attempt to close several dozen disputes simultaneously," government commissioner for the European Court in Strasbourg Vit Schrom told MfD.
The current list of people who have been offered compensation was made on the basis of an appeal from the Strasbourg court.
"Our reaction was that we will try to achieve conciliatory agreements. The talks are confidential. Some have rejected our offer and others have accepted it. The talks continues and I don't want to provide further details," Schorm told the paper.
He said that the individual amounts of compensation offered to people differed and depended on the nature and the length of their court disputes. However, higher amounts should be approved by the government, he said.
Although the state bodies have not disclosed the amount of proposed compensation the costs could reach millions of crowns, the paper says.
However, the financial compensation will not ensure quick solutions to the disputes. "The main problem is that people who are seeking to assert their rights in court are harmed by the lax approach to their matter. This means that they are denied their rights," Constitutional Court judge Antonin Prochazka told Mlada fronta Dnes.
Premier and Social Democrat (CSSD) chairman Vladimir Spidla also agrees that the compensation alone will not correct the situation. "In serious cases, compensation is appropriate but we are also seeking to improve our judiciary. This is, however, an extremely complicated question," Spidla told MfD.
In certain cases, the Strasbourg court has ordered that the Czech government pay compensation to its citizens. This happened, for instance, in the case of a teacher of a nursery from Klatovy, west Bohemia, who received almost half a million crowns in compensation for the Czech courts dealing with her case of the division of property after divorce during 15 years.

($1=27.193 crowns)

Source in English, in Czech

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