Purchase of the Prague 7 town hall building for the state attorney’s office. A dirty fight, reacts Jan Čižinský
photo: Vít Hassan for PrahaIN.cz/Jan Čižinský
“At the beginning of the journey to the new town hall, there was a citizens’ referendum, which we organized with colleagues and friends. We were annoyed that our political predecessors wanted to build a megalomaniacal project for one and a half billion crowns. In the referendum, we pledged that the complete cost of the town hall, including everything, would not exceed 500 million and that it would be determined by an architectural competition. Today we have achieved it,” stated the mayor of Prague 7, Jan Čižinský (Praha sebo) in March 2020 on the district’s website.
Čižínský was elected to the city hall of the seventh district in 2014. His PRAGUE 7 SOBĚ received 43.68 percent at that time. Four years later, 55.47 percent.
Immediately after winning in 2014, according to the city district’s website, Čižinský and his colleagues began the process of selecting a town hall. “On the basis of a public tender in November 2015, the council decided to purchase the old administrative building for CZK 89 million without tax. The deposit of ownership took place in February 2016,” states v declaration. The costs of the construction work amounted to 241 million crowns without VAT. The original plan was around 1.6 crowns.
The town hall clearly made significant savings.
Even so, the purchase of a new building raises doubts. Redakce.cz obtained the material that the public prosecutor’s office received7 also received the District Acquaintance for Prague. It is about “Facts indicating the commission of a crime. Negotiating an advantage in a public tender, fraud in the management of municipal property and unauthorized handling of entrusted funds of the municipality of Prague 7”.
A number of documents for the purchase of a new town hall seat
The whistleblower points primarily to the fact that the purchase could have been a “very well staged fraud” for 3 to 12 million crowns. It contains several non-standard steps in the text.
This is, for example, the fact that the Commission for the selection of the seat of the office of the City of Prague 7 is said to have not received opinions and documents. “The fundamental failure lies in the council of the Municipal Council of Prague 7, which further allowed the secrecy of the legal opinions of the commission and many other documents of the commission for the selection of the headquarters of the Municipal Council of Prague 7 and subsequently submitted material to the council mixing these facts together. In this way, she clearly and very non-transparently consecrated the material for the purchase of the U Průhonu 38 building,” the announcement reads.
The writer also carried out a potential that the company, which conducted a survey of offers for rent or purchase of real estate for the relocation of the office, entered into an intermediary agreement with the broker who was in charge of the sale of the real estate at U Průhonu 38.
“Doma je doma (the mentioned company) simultaneously concluded a second contract for the provision of the building U Průhonu 38 with the probable aim of obtaining a significant financial benefit from this property transaction. This put her in an obvious conflict of interest, when she simultaneously created the impression that she was providing independent professional services and concluded a contract in which she was supposed to receive additional income in the order of millions of crowns from her recommendation, without the knowledge of the Municipal Council of Prague 7, which could thus be a fundamental financial operation knowingly manipulated,” the whistleblower also stated.
Timeline
On September 7, 2015, the Slovak company Doma je doma came with a request for market research. On 23.9. In September, he concludes a commission agreement for the sale of the building at U Průhonu 38. In mid-October, a summary supporting the sale or purchase of this building is presented.
On November 16, the Doma je doma company issues an invoice to the city district of Prague 7 for the research of potential offers to rent or purchase real estate for office relocation in the amount of 60,000 crowns without VAT.
Today, November 20, the Commission is discussing only three offers, including the U Průhon building.
Today, November 23 the council agreed Prague 7 purchase of a building (editor’s note in the Resolution of the Council states that the purchase of the building was recommended to the Council by the Commission for the Selection of the Office of the City of Prague 7 and the Council of the City of Prague 7 on 23 November 2015 recommended the purchase of the building to the Council).
The informant said that due to the fact that the announcement of the public tender was very short, it was a fortnight. On October 27, 2015, a public tender was announced and a call for bids was published for the sale of real estate for the headquarters of the Office of the City of Prague 7. The deadline for submitting bids was 5 p.m. on November 11, 2015. This information is also available on the website of the municipal district.
The announcement also includes a report from the Doma je Doma company.
It is interesting that the company makes a recommendation to the town hall that the competition be organized quickly. In the document she prepared for the town hall, it is stated: “We therefore recommend not publishing information about the steps of the ÚFŘ or about the planned competition, to organize the competition quickly and to choose shorter deadlines rather than longer ones.” Commercial owners have completed high-quality passporting of the buildings (documentation, overview of the technical condition) and a more or less clear idea of how much they can sell the buildings for. We believe that they are able to file in the order of two weeks. Long deadlines do provide more time to prepare offers, but also room for tactics, which can jeopardize the advantage of the competition.”
It’s a campaign, says the mayor
We asked the mayor and mayoral candidate Jan Čižínský about the matter. In the words of press spokesperson Cecília Antůšková, she rejects all accusations and called the whole matter a pre-election event.
“Mr. Ladin, a competitor and counter-candidate for mayor for TOP09 in Prague 7, who is also running for mayor for TOGETHER, filed a report on the whole matter. This is nothing more than the traditional dirty pre-election political fight that is characteristic of some politicians. Apparently, this is a pre-election event, as it is a week before the elections and the transactions were detected seven years ago. Similar pseudo-cases always appear “by pure chance” a few days before the elections. The ODS wanted to build a town hall for one and a half billion and thus put Prague 7 in debt for a generation. The referendum thwarted this ODS plan, and the current management of the town hall purchased it for a third of the cost and met the conditions of the referendum with a reserve of 50 million crowns. The Doma je doma company conducted a market survey for the town hall (without revealing the ultimate interest) in order to find out the availability and price range of real estate – the report was part of the documents for the purchase voted on by the council – so it is not new information. Team role Home is at home is over. Subsequently, a transparent public tender was announced, in which every owner of a suitable property could submit an offer. Out of the five offers, the cheapest was chosen for 90 million, and the purchase took place directly from the owner without intermediaries,” a spokeswoman told PrahaIN.cz.
We also contacted Doma je Doma company. We were interested in approximately how much she received from the brokerage contract she concluded in connection with the house at U Průhonu 38.