Prague - The Czech constitutional court has ruled that police and public attorneys which prosecute some of the Czech Republic's largest fraud and corruption cases cannot use evidence they have obtained in the offices of the firms they investigate.
According to the constitutional court, all searches in so-called non-residential places (such as offices) need to be sanctioned by the court. So far, Czech prosecutors and police needed the court's consent only for home searches.
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In addition, in September 2010 the constitutional court ruled that this applies also to the current prosecutions or already closed cases.
Czech police and state prosecutors are shocked by the constitutional court's latest ruling, and they do not know whether they will have to close tens of high-profile economic criminality cases, since most of them are based on the searches that were allowed only by the prosecutors, and not by the court.
For example, in the High State Attorney's Office in Prague, which prosecutes the most serious economic crimes, in 80 percent of the cases it prosecutes, the evidence has been obtained in searches not authorized by court. Those cases involve CZK 7,500 million (EUR 300 million) stolen from the state.
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Krejčíř case
Aktualne.cz has already found that some defense attorneys have used the ruling of the constitutional court to officially complain about the prosecutors of their clients using unlawfully obtained evidence.
"I have already issued a formal complaint. According to the finding of the constitutional court, the evidence against my client has been obtained unconstitutionally," said Tomáš Sokol, an advocate of Radovan Krejčíř.
The Krejčíř case is without doubt the largest economic criminality case the Czech Republic has seen in the last decade. This Czech businessman and billionaire has been accused of fraud, corruption, abduction and preparing a murder. In 2005, the prosecuted Krejčíř infamously flee the Czech Republic to Seychelles. Eventually, he moved to South Africa, where he was briefly arrested but subsequently released. Currently he stays in South Africa.
So far, the prosecution has not been successful. Except for a minor economic delict, for which he received probation years ago, Krejčíř has never been convicted of anything. And given the latest finding of the constitutional court, it may very well remain so.
