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Czech anti-corruption police raids Regional Development Ministry

Xinhua, March 20, 2015 Adjust font size:

Czech anti-corruption police announced it raided the Regional Development Ministry on Thursday as part of an ongoing investigation.

Czech Regional Development Minister Karla Slechtova said the police action was in order to obtain evidence of an overpriced IT contract.

Slechtova said police are gathering information on a contract for a monitoring system meant to register all European subsidies from the period 2014 to 2020.

The firms Tesco SW and Datasys won the bid worth over 1 billion crowns (about 39 million U.S. dollars). But the European Commission refused to pay for the contract due to a law violation, so the Czech Republic had to pay the money from its own state coffers.

According to an audit commissioned by the Czech Finance Ministry in 2014, the Regional Development Ministry paid most money for IT services, audits and consultancy from 2011 to 2013.

Veronika Varosi from the Regional Development Ministry said the ministry would extend full cooperation to the police. (1 U.S. dollar = 25.78 Czech crowns) Endit