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Respekt in English12. 8. 20028 minut

Secret Agents of the Clerk Srba

Another shock has been added to the scandal with the contract murder of the journalist Sabina Slonková. Karel Srba, who was the main organiser of the crime according to the police, has been allegedly responsible, as an agent of the military intelligence service, for sending Czech secret agents abroad under diplomatic coverage since 1999.

Astronaut

Another shock has been added to the scandal with the contract murder of the journalist Sabina Slonková. Karel Srba, who was the main organiser of the crime according to the police, has been allegedly responsible, as an agent of the military intelligence service, for sending Czech secret agents abroad under diplomatic coverage since 1999. The advisors of the ex-Prime Minister Zeman, namely Miroslav Šlouf and Zdenik Vystoupil, knew about his activity. „On February 24th 1999, the controlling body 1045 had a meeting with Miroslav Šlouf and Zdenik Vystoupil in the presence of the agent Salima,“ state the minutes of their meeting. The matter of secret agents was discussed and Salima is the cover name of Srba. It follows from the investigation of the preparation for the contract murder of the journalist Sabina Slonková and the corruption at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that the men from the military intelligence service knew about the corruption practices at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and even participated in them.

Kavan the Coordinator

↓ INZERCE

The man, who was responsible for operation of intelligence services and their coordination in the last four years, was Jan Kavan. „It is true that I was the coordinator of intelligence services, but I did not know what they were doing. I also did not know that Srba was responsible for sending people from the military intelligence service abroad,“ claims Kavan today. If this is so, he should resign from all his current offices. If, as a man responsible for intelligence services, he did not know that the intelligence service was using his closest co-worker and was violating the law by doing so, there is no excuse for his incompetence. The military intelligence service is not allowed to operate on the territory of the Czech Republic; it is not allowed to send its agents abroad under diplomatic coverage without the knowledge of the government. This is clearly defined in the Intelligence Services Act. But the intelligence service was doing so under Kavan.

A year ago, the mass media published the report that Karel Srba had been used as an agent spying on the then Minister Jaroslav Bašta in 1999. Bašta had a secret meeting with two officers of the military intelligence service in 1999 and the top officials of the service tried to learn details about this meeting through Srba. This was, of course, a breach of law because the intelligence service is not allowed to perform intelligence-service activities on the territory of the Czech Republic. The governmental committee for intelligence services, whose member Kavan was, held a meeting and discussed the scandal around Bašta on the basis of the information published in the mass media about the Srba's task. „On that occasion, the Minister Tvrdík clearly said there that Karel Srba was extremely unreliable, that he was getting out of control and that he was managing the officers, instead of the officers managing him,“ recalls one of the participants of the meeting. According to law, an agent is actually a mere squealer, a man, who cooperates with an intelligence service out of his conviction or for money. „It is absolutely out of the question that an agent could be allowed to have knowledge of where the officers of the intelligence service were placed. And it is unbelievable that an agent participated in their sending abroad,“ says an expert from the civil intelligence service.

Allegedly, Zeman and Kavan put across at the meeting that there would be no resolution on the activities of Srba. In other words, they said that there should have been silence around Srba in spite of the fact that at that time, his fundamental participation in the corruption-involving contract on lease of the hotel Czech House in Moscow had already been known. Why did Zeman and Kavan sweep the scandal under the carpet? And who was actually managing the institutions entrusted to Jan Kavan, if such an extensive violation of law and such a corruption, about which the police sources, investigating the activities of Karel Srba, speak today, could have taken place in those institutions without the knowledge of „the boss“? „I will not tell you anything,“ responds Kavan to all such questions today. However, there is one possible answer among the speculations: the arrested member of Srba's group, Eva Tomšovieová, recently testified that the man, who was managing Karel Srba from the backstage and was assigning him the tasks concerning corruption in public procurement contracts for the Ministry was Miroslav Šlouf, the supreme advisor of Zeman. „Zeman trusted Šlouf, who had probably the people from the intelligence service under his control,“ an expert from the civil secret service supplements the confession of Tomšovieová. „There is no evidence on this but it follows from the testimonies of several foreign businessmen that the secret agents sent by Srba participated in the meetings with the companies, which participated in public procurement tenders. Mainly bribes were allegedly involved,“ says the expert.

Tomáš Andra, an officer of the military intelligence service, who had recruited Srba for cooperation with the secret service four years ago, was appointed as a diplomat. He works at the embassy in Kazakhstan. Cooperation with Srba brought him promotion to the rank of a colonel and a lucrative position of the cultural attaché. „I do not know him,“ the ex-Minister Kavan, who signed the attaché's letter of appointment, comments on his appointment.

Delicate Task

The military intelligence service is partly paid from the state budget. However, it obtains a substantial part of its incomes from the business activities of companies, which are managed abroad by illegal agents, that is, by agents acting under a false identity. One of the versions of the investigators inquiring into the suspicious lease of the hotel Czech House says that the building was to be used for concealed generation of finances for the secret service. The indicia speak in favour of this version. In September 2000, Srba, an agent of the intelligence service, leased the hotel to a company owned by Stanislav Brei, the director of the hotel, who was a permanent employee of the military intelligence service. According to an ex-diplomat from Moscow, he was a highly reliable and efficient officer, whose activities were appreciated even by the American and British intelligence services. Nevertheless, the scandal with the lease of the hotel ruined his position in the secret service and, allegedly, Brei is „merely“ an employee of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs today.

The Srba's murderous scandal was good for some purpose. It aroused the interest of the public in the military intelligence service, which has been beyond any control up until now and which employs seventy percent of the people, who were doing this work during the totalitarian regime. Last week, the Minister Tvrdík suspended seven officers of the military intelligence service for their involvement in the scandal around Srba. „Excuse me, but this is classified information for the time being so I cannot speak about it,“ he responds to a question on whether the secret agents participated in the corruption transaction with the hotel or whether the intelligence service even wanted to privatise the hotel for its own purposes. The fact is that most Czech companies conclude their contracts with their Russian partners in the hotel; politicians, state officials and soldiers stay in the hotel during their trips to Russia. According to unofficial information, for example, the contract between Falkon and the representatives of the Ministry of Finance on repayment of the Russian state debt owed to the Czech Republic was negotiated in the hotel. „There have been dozens of delicate meetings in the Czech House,“ says an ex-diplomat from the Czech embassy in Moscow.

Srba had been an agent of the intelligence service up until the moment when he was arrested at the beginning of July. The police is investigating into whether he actively collaborated with the secret service and what he was doing after he left the Ministry. Srba's contacts to diplomats, who got abroad thanks to him, are also examined. Interconnection with Zeman's advisors gives new dimensions to the case - investigation of corruption does not affect only the Ministry of Foreign Affairs but also the then Prime Minister Zeman and essentially the entire government.


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