PRAGUE - A former government minister got a rare comeuppance from a Czech court on Friday when he was found guilty of giving bribes in a country where graft has become a hot topic of public debate.
A Prague district court gave Vit Barta, a Maserati-driving former transport minister and an influential leader of the Public Affairs party, an 18-month suspended sentence for bribing his party’s parliamentary deputies to keep their loyalty.
The ruling was closely followed by voters who have been increasingly angry over a series of revelations of cronyism in the political elite and by the inability of the justice system to put any high-profile suspects behind bars.
Barta, a 38-year-old lawyer who has flashed his wealth, is the unofficial chief and brains behind the centrist party which won 10.9 percent in the 2010 election and joined a centre-right coalition led by Prime Minister Petr Necas.
He is now under pressure to quit parliament and Necas said he expected him to do so.
"I cannot see a different solution in relation to the verdict," Necas said.
Barta said after the verdict he would suspend his membership in Public Affairs but stopped short of saying he would give up his parliamentary mandate.
A refusal to quit could bring new conflict to the shaky coalition that nearly collapsed last week due to an unrelated row between Public Affairs and its partners.
A poll this week showed 41 percent of Czechs see corruption as the single most important factor influencing political decision-making, an all-time high.
Half of the cabinet’s 16 ministers have resigned in less than two years the government has held power, and half of them have resigned due to financial scandals.
Necas, who has not been implicated, has said the scandals were linked to the past and were part of a cleansing process which included leadership changes in the capital Prague as well as new legislation on public tenders.
Barta’s case revolved around 670,000 crowns ($35,600) in cash he gave to two deputies. Barta said the money was loaned.
The amount involved is tiny compared with multi-billion-crown procurement deals that have come under scrutiny due to suspicions of kickbacks. None of the deals has been proven illegal by police, prosecutors or courts, which critics see as the weak links of Czech’s two-decades-old democracy.
Still, commentators welcomed the Barta verdict as a sign that corrupt politicians and their business friends can no longer count on immunity.
"The end of one stage of Czech politics," said the headline of a commentary by Hospodarske Noviny columnist Jindrich Sidlo.
