STAN in Zlín stood for years on money from Redl’s gambling. That they met by chance at a hotel is nonsense, says activist Hollan
Brno activist and politician Matěj Hollan has been involved in gambling mapping in the Czech Republic for many years. He visited Zlín many times, because the local gambling lobby was always very strong. He came across the name Michal Redl and his company Gambler very soon, as well as the connection between gambling and the local organization STAN. He thus places current events in a deeper context and refutes the rhetoric that no one actually knows Redla and that this businessman emerged from nowhere.
Where did you first meet the name Redl?
I’ll give you some context in order to be in the picture. From 2009 to 2014, I was fully involved in the regulation of gambling and anti-gambling activism. We toured the whole country and helped local initiatives that wanted to get rid of the rampant gambling on their territory. Zlín was one of the destinations and it was because the gambling there was the most interesting in the whole republic. This is due to the fact that Synot is based there. Zlín is still full of vending machines. In addition to the dominant Ivo Valenta, who controls all the political parties there, Mr. Redl also appeared. The Redl family works in the gaming business permanently, they threw themselves into it right after the revolution. Valenta built a great empire, the Redls had more of a local presence, they weren’t that big. So the Zlín region as a whole is a gamble and it really is still a bastion of gambling throughout the country. This is a need you need. Gambling is a determining factor for local politics.
Dear citizen of Zlín
So you came across Mr. Redl in Zlín?
Yes, it was in 2014, when there were conferences on gambling and various discussions. Since then, I remember the name of Mr. Redl, but also the name of the then Ondřej Běták Square, a member of the management of Zlín’s STAN. At that time, he was constantly opposed to efforts to regulate gambling in Zlín. It was at a time when Redl had given them hundreds of thousands. And we’re only talking about the officially verifiable amounts. It is interesting in the context of the sentences of the then STAN chairman Petr Gazdík from 2017, when they tried to explain the alliance between Polčák and Michal Redl (now accused in the Hlubuček case). By the way, he is a man who is supposed to be selfless, while working in his father’s companies and doing business happily. Gazdík tried to explain this at the time that he was not a son, but his father, who is a respected and respected personality in Zlín. I repeat, he is an entrepreneur who has worked in gambling since the 1990s, and Mr Gazdík called him a respected citizen of Zlín. They own hotels, a shopping center, there is gambling everywhere. Their company is called Gambler Zlín. It is a family gambling company, the whole family really works there. Of course, they sent money to various charitable and social events, which the gambler likes to do and legitimizes with it. But that doesn’t make them esteemed citizens.
Vít Rakušan also talks about being esteemed citizens, so he is wrong?
Matěj Hollan
– musician and activist, focused mainly on gambling
– he spoke mainly against gambling
– in 2014–2018 he worked as the Deputy Chairman of the political movement Living Brno in the position of the Representative of the City of Brno and the 3rd Deputy Mayor, and at the same time also as the Representative of the Brno-Střed City District
– in 2018 he no longer defended these mandates and later became the director of the Association of non-governmental organizations working in the field of reducing the risks of addiction
He just took over the original Gazdík’s rhetoric. Gazdík probably realizes how it really is, because he is from Zlín and he knows how it all was then, so he preferred to resign. The Austrian knows nothing about it, he just repeats what someone told him, instead of verifying it himself.
Gazdík says that he doesn’t know Michal Redl very well, he met him by chance at a hotel on vacation, do you believe that?
It’s complete nonsense. I do not have direct evidence for what I will say now, but I derive it from my political background and how I knew politics myself. The Redls were a major sponsor of the STAN movement under the leadership of Gazdík and Polčák. It is not at all conceivable that these two gentlemen did not know each other thoroughly, by which I mean everyone in the family. Imagine that you are with them in one region, they send you money, so it is not possible that you do not know who it is. In politics, it’s not like a stranger sends you money and you thank him for it. And then you happen to meet him on vacation. This is just nonsense. So I deduce it, I have no evidence, but I can’t even imagine that it would be as Gazdík claims. I offer the only possible explanation that they just know each other well.
STAN returned 300,000 from Redl. Is it enough?
They only return the money for a few years, where they probably happened to look in the accounts and find it there. But there will be money from the Redls in ten years. In 2017, Gazdík said that Redl supported them for several terms. So it is already clear from that statement that it was a long-term cooperation and it is not about some small money, it will certainly not be hundreds of thousands. And the question is, what and how do you want to return, and to whom? Will gambling money go back to those gamblers or to whom?
Gambling is like cancer
The STAN management pretends that all these things are for something new, do you believe them?
It is not new that STAN was connected to the gambling business. This is common and long known. The novelty is that Redl’s practices have been transferred to Prague. The Austrian claims that he did not know and I believe him. He didn’t know because he wasn’t interested and didn’t want to know. He probably thought it was history and he’d rather not get too involved. He never looked at it. Gazdík has already resigned, as well as Polčák has resigned, and I would guess that both will eventually resign. But, it is not important. The main thing is that if STAN wants to clean up somehow, it must proceed as YES in the Stoka case. This means abolishing the entire local organization in Zlín. The problem arose in Zlín and must be solved there. He must cleanse Zlín of gambling, get rid of all gambling money and all people connected to gambling. It’s like cancer, it has to be cut out, or it won’t work. You cannot pretend to be against corruption and at the same time stand on such grounds.
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