This publication attempts to describe various models of abuse of entrusted power or bending of the statutory arrangement of powers in favour of a defined circle of beneficiaries. Rather on the margins of the era of cronyism, we cannot ignore one branch of distortions. To define the term, let us also briefly recall our student years to illustrate what took place at the Straka Academy between 2010 and 2013, but can take place in variously modified forms in any office.
Each college has set rules for its activities. Students can report for an exam on the first day of the month, the teacher enters the exam result into the system within two days or the dean of the faculty decides on a request for interruption of studies within two weeks. These rules are enshrined somewhere, and can be more or less successfully enforced. But let’s imagine that there is a capricious lady sitting at the concierge desk or the study department. She is supposed to receive the application, add important information to it, and perhaps prepare a decision of the dean that on the basis of that application a suspension of studies is allowed. And the lady takes it into her head that the application should only be submitted on Tuesday or on some form she has made up herself, or that her colleague, who has absolutely nothing to do with the application, should comment on it. Well, and the student can argue school regulations, common sense that it doesn’t make sense, and general legal principles that only a certain set of obligations can be imposed and they must be recorded somewhere. So if the obligation is not enshrined, the lady should take the application and sort out what is expected of her. It is just that we are in a model of deformation called “babocracy.” You need that resolution, she won’t hand it over to the dean without a ridiculous paper, so you have no choice but to comply with the Babocratic whim, and you can complain to, say, the lamppost.
However, the above model of Babocratic deformation does not apply only to study departments, but can affect any office in some modification. Simply, a secretary will begin to decide with a weak director which appointments to arrange, which decisions to present to the minister with which statement, and which person to allow a telephone connection before the crucial targeting of public support.
The flagship of the Babocratic government was Jana Nagyová (since 2013 Nečasová). The former canteen girl, whom Petr Nečas brought into his office apparatus as Minister of Labour and Social Affairs, became a powerful person through whom the Prime Minister of our country effectively made decisions in that period. Sometime during his premiership, Nečas took Nagyová into his bed, and thus her power to control everything around her became unlimited in the period 2010-2013. Nagyová formally possessed all the above-defined tools as the Chief Director of the Prime Minister’s Cabinet Section. At that time, the head of Nečas’s apparatus and mistress decided with whom the Prime Minister would communicate, whom he would accept, whose application would be considered, and she was certainly able to influence her lover’s view on this or that matter.
But just by being able to help some of her friends or other interested parties, the system of remuneration was started. In practice, the way it worked was that if someone wanted a meeting with Nečas or intended to ask for some other benefit and wanted Nečas to look favourably on his matter, it was good practice to give the gift to the person who could arrange it. And so, with his request, he brought a fur coat, a necklace, a purse, or jewelry for Nagy. The playful protagonist of the Babocratic exercise of her office learned, as time went on, to mark herself what would make her happy.
And who was walking around with presents at the time? Daniel Křetínský, the owner of Sparta football club, lobbyist Vladimír Johanes, godfather Ivo Rittig, Petr Št’ovíček, the director of the Land Office, Martin Horák, the manager of the Prague transport company, and Daniel Beneš, the ruler of ČEZ. Later, when the police did the math, they concluded that Nagyová had made some ten million in just about a year and a half from the scam. We note that this was probably a fraction of what Nagyová received, and a fraction of her collection period.
In any case, the period of cronyism and grandocracy was brought to an end by the intervention of Robert Šlachta and his cohorts in June 2013. Four lines of investigation into the power context of the government of Petr Nečas were launched. Apart from the aforementioned collecting actions of Mrs Nagyova, in which the police saw the shortage of the gift tax, there was the assignment by Nagyova for the intelligence service to spy on the then wife of Nečas, the de facto bribing of the then ex-members of parliament with positions to enable the next government and some of the godmotherly connections of the government. The criminal results were, euphemistically speaking, very weak. In any case, with the arrival of Rusnok’s , or Zeman’s official government, one corrupt stage of history came to an end.
A remarkable aspect of Czech society is the tendency to forget everything negative. We just tell ourselves that it’s not like that anymore, so what’s the point. But some 11 years have passed since Nagyová’s clientelistic-corruption nest was dispersed, and there is simply no reflection on what happened. No one, as far as we know, at the Justice Ministry has looked at what happened then through the lens of the Criminal Code. That is why we are at least asking: Shouldn’t some provision of the Criminal Code focus on Jana Nagy’s actions at the time and define the facts of accepting a bribe in such a way as to punish a person who illegally accepts gifts not in connection with a specific transaction, but to consolidate an informal structure ? Shouldn’t the offence of receiving undue advantage beyond the limits be defined ?
