Prague - Czech Ministry of Justice expects Switzerland to issue international warrants for six Czech citizens charged with money laundering.
The ministry has no information on the present location of these Czech citizens, and the Czech authorities will not extradite them.
On Monday this week, the Swiss prosecutor's office charged seven people, six of them of Czechs, with financial crimes "in connection with a certain important energy company from the Czech Republic."
Read more: Skoda Plzen silently moves its seat to Marshall Islands
Read more: Police looks into Martin Roman's links to Skoda
The case is probably about the privatization of MUS (Most Coal Company), a brown coal company from Most, Northern Bohemia. It is possible that among the accused are local so-called "coal barons" Antonín Koláček a Luboš Měkota, dále Marek Čmejla, Oldřich Klimecký, Petr Kraus a Jiří Diviš.
We don't extradite
"I do not want to anticipate, but it is likely that the Swiss will issue international warrants for the accused," said the ministry's spokesperson Tereza Palečková, adding that the ministry have no official information about the Swiss investigation. Thus she was not able to confirm or deny that the case is about MUS.
"We expect the Swiss side to approach us. They could ask for the extradition, but the Czech Republic, in accordance with its penal code, do not extradite its citizens to foreign countries for criminal persecution," explained Palečková.
Read more: Fraud hunter to inspect Czech EU-funded purchases
Read more: "If Osama were a shareholder, nobody would know"
Six years of investigation
Jeanette Balmer from the Swiss federal prosecution in Bern confirmed to Aktualne.cz that the case is really about MUS.
"After a complex international financial investigation, which lasted six years, the prosecutor's office considers the suspicion resulting from this investigation to be sufficient to press a charge," said Balmer.
The case was already submitted to the Federal Criminal Court in Bellinzona.
The Czech Republic privatized the brown coal company in 1998. A few years later, the Swiss prosecutors started to look into the privatization process, said Czech online daily iHned three years ago.
Back then, the Swiss suspected that the protagonists of the privatization had committed four economic crimes, including forgery of official documents and money laundering.
"The managers used the company's assets to take it over. According to our assumptions, these operations caused financial damage to the company and to the Czech Republic," explained the Swiss prosecution.
The investigators froze assets worth CHF 600mil (EUR 492mil) and investigated six Czech citizens (two of them possessing also Swiss citizenship).
The Swiss investigators said that the trail led to tens of offshore companies with hundreds of bank accounts. Some of them were blocked recently by the police.
"The illegal activities were allowed to take place to a large degree thanks to cooperation with the authorities of the Isle of Man and the Czech Republic," said the Swiss prosecution.
