1.4. Underhand moneychangers

This and the following chapter trace the fate of certain groups of people in our country who had a comparative advantage after the fall of the communist government and have significantly entered the history of corruption. These are both people who had some experience in dealing with foreigners and some business talent and those who had some entry capital for business. This chapter should affect the phenomenon of the baksheesh. This term encompasses the existence then of a criminal character engaged in the trade of foreign currencies. For the purposes of this publication, however, we include among them dealers in Western luxury goods.

But first we should kind of get a sense of how things were run back then. If someone, through a variety of circumstances, bribes and acquaintances, managed to travel south or west of our border, perhaps to visit a brother in West Germany or a classmate in Britain, he would try to make sure that the trip was not wasted, so that the family would get something. The trip didn’t have to be repeated right away. Therefore, if this excursionist or Czechoslovak citizen working in capitalist countries examined a mark, dollar or franc, he had a small treasure in Czechoslovakia. Correctly, he should have exchanged every Western chechtak for bony. But at that time, only a person ignorant of the world would do that. The reason why the sophisticated people did not do so was the extremely unfavourable exchange rate between the Western currency and the bon, i.e. the Tuzex currency. Much more interesting conditions for the exchange of currencies were offered by the bill collector in front of the bank or the tuzex. These people bought at an exchange rate at which they and their client could get rich. We must add that the bill collectors were connected not only to returning individuals, but also to Western tourists or employees of foreign shops. They were then most often introduced to these people in their basic and official jobs, for example in taxis or as barmen. In addition to currency, they acquired small goods such as sunglasses, digital watches, American cigarettes and chewing gum, or clothing from famous international brands. Since these items could never be acquired by a domestic citizen except by importing, buying from a tuzex shop, or from a bill collector, they were in desperate short supply. The shortage in turn gave rise to incredible business opportunities. While an ordinary worker from a screwdriving factory came home in the 1980s with a salary of about CZK 3,000, a well-connected and well-established supplier-customer network could earn 20 times that.

Let us add several important factors to the amount of capital allocated in this way. First of all, in the course of these illegal ventures, the bill collector has acquired unprecedented entrepreneurial skills. An ordinary person who worked during the week and spent his weekends tending his cottage garden could at most sniff out a bargain by obtaining eggs from his neighbour’s chickens for 10 h and shooting them for 5 h more in the block of flats, since the quality and colour of the yolk differed greatly from those in the supermarket. In contrast, such a businessman knew the exchange rates, demand and supply in different social groups and could arrange dozens of things and services. Apart from being able to get a tape recorder or a lighter, with which anyone would like to impress a girl, he could scrape together currency when someone went out west. Last but not least, he could latch on to a foreigner staying in Czechoslovakia for some reason and help him solve everyday problems or secure smuggled or manufactured drugs or satisfy an unusual sexual appetite. On that occasion, he practiced German, English or perhaps Italian.

There were hundreds of such masters of the trade in the larger cities and they knew each other. For this reason, many of them specialized in trading in a certain commodity. Karel knew how to get whiskey and herded three girls around a hotel, Pepa knew digital and had large sums in Italian lira, and Jindra commanded smugglers of porn videos and could export antiques on favorable terms.

The communist apparatus tended to specialize in inspecting vehicles from the West for imports of samizdat publications or otherwise defective printed matter, so there was not much danger to real professionals from the SS either, unless someone made some fatal mistake. For those unfortunates who couldn’t walk the walk or angered someone, a criminal offence under Section 146 or 147 of the Criminal Code (see below) awaited them.

As a result, when officials at the Ministry of Finance were just learning the basics of market economics in the early 1990s and biting their pencils on what terms to insert into the basic legislation regulating business in the early 1990s, former bill collectors had enormous resources, knowledge and contacts to start both legal and illegal businesses.

Entire monographs have been written about the greatest capacities of this period in the bills of exchange, such as František Mrázek or Miroslav Provoda, and these people never stepped out of the grey zone, even though they appeared at the top of business and power. Therefore, we have chosen someone else from the strange field of contributory existence. A textbook example of how far ahead people from a given industry were and how high they could rise is the fate of Ivo Valenta, a former cook and waiter, later a regional rogue, and still later the king of Czech gambling and a senator. From his official biography we read how the boy, interested in gastronomy and working honestly in the hospitality industry, bought a feather cleaning business after November and went on to realise the Wallachian mutation of the American dream, at the end of which is a seat in the legislature, billions earned, citizenship of Monaco and the badges of such status in the form of jets and other pleasures. But the people from the vicinity of Uherské Hradiště probably remember a double of Valente, a thug who, as a waiter under the communists, was able to arrange many a mischief with his cronies. When he made his initial capital in a strange way, he bought the first Czech slot machines. If anyone competed with him in the region, his biker cronies borrowed him and explained to him – in the manner of the American 1930s – that he was not doing the right thing. The same mafia style of behaviour was then, according to the memoirs, evident in the takeover of “slot” machine companies or in the bribing of football. The way he bought up large media houses, lobbied for gambling licences in the style of a Wallachian waiter, entered politics, pushed people he liked into the civil service, sat in the upper house of parliament and was convicted of corruption – all this is already common knowledge.

However, similar figures have outgrown not only business but also politics in Slovakia. Let us recall, for example, the figure of Boris Kollár, who does not deny his past as a bakshell. While he brags directly about his computer business, police documents also talk about drugs. Nevertheless, he rose to the position of speaker of parliament and head of the ruling party, with a number of honorary positions that he duly enjoyed.