AT an extraordinary meeting of the board of directors of Czech infrastructure manager SŽ on December 1, it was unanimously decided to dismiss the company’s CEO, Jiří Svoboda.
His departure from SŽ is the result of an ongoing police anti-corruption investigation, which included raids on the offices of the infrastructure manager and Svoboda’s private residence. Although Svoboda, who was appointed CEO in 2018, has not been charged with any offence, his position was found to be untenable.
“Recently published information about the examination of some contracts relating to the infrastructure manager and its CEO casts a negative shadow on the functioning of the organisation and undermines public trust. This is unacceptable,” says transport minister, Martin Kupka.
According to local media, the police raids on November 25 found Koruna 80m (€335,000) in cash in various currencies, as well as a collection of luxury watches, at Svoboda’s residence. The former CEO says that these are legitimate personal belongings.
The SŽ board of directors was not informed by Svoboda about the police raid at his home and only learned about it from media reports. These say that the police are reviewing the contracts of several large infrastructure projects, including Brno’s Královo Pole station redevelopment, remodelling the track layout at Pardubice station and development projects in and around the Prague’s Masarykovo terminus. It is understood that SŽ and the Czech Ministry of Transport will start their own audits.
The SŽ board meeting on December 1 appointed Mojmír Nejezchleb, previously deputy director for modernisation and SŽ deputy CEO, as Svoboda’s temporary successor.
A permanent replacement will be chosen by the new Czech government. The nominee to replace Kupka as transport minister is Ivan Bednárik, who was appointed CEO of Slovak infrastructure manager ŽSR in May and has previously served as CEO of Czech Railways (ČD).
