Infamous late-night call to Pirates from a drinks-do dismissed as fabrication by digitalisation auditor

The Pirate Party claim they were offered a chance to influence the Building Permit Digitalisation Audit, which was published last week by the Ministry of Regional Development. But this is categorically denied by a managing partner at Portos, the firm that worked on the audit.

Before the full audit was made public, the mood was strained both at the law firm’s Pankrác offices in Prague and at the ministry, with the Pirates alleging they were offered the chance to look over the audit before its official release. Seznam Zprávy has learned that a meeting was supposedly arranged by Marian Piecha, the former deputy minister at the Ministry of Industry and Trade, who acknowledged serving as a go-between.

Where do the Pirates see red flags? Portos partner Jan Sůra and his intermediary reportedly proposed a “quid pro quo”. Pirates analyst Janusz Konieczny, who had taken a swipe at Portos over another issue a few weeks before, said Piecha and Sůra called him on WhatsApp at 11.08 p.m. on Tuesday.

“I could tell they’d had a few drinks. They were talking about how we should put an end to this pointless war, and suggested meeting on Thursday at an Italian restaurant to discuss the Building Permit Digitalisation Audit, which Mr Sůra is responsible for,” Konieczny told us.

Changing something in the audit would be “no problem at all” they allegedly said. “Their behaviour was unbelievable. It felt like a throwback to the 1990s,” Konieczny added. Ivan Bartoš, former Pirates leader and top-of-list candidate for the Central Bohemian Region, also weighed in. “How can we know how many calls like this there have been, and between whom? It means a so-called independent audit is not worth the paper it’s written on. It’s a huge waste, nearly three million crowns of taxpayers’ money shelled out by the government. We want the police to investigate,“ he said.

Now, the auditor, Portos, is giving its version of events. So far, the firm has only responded via a press secretary and a press release. There’s clearly an agenda behind Konieczny’s statements, they say. “We were surprised at the story he concocted,” says Jaromír Císař, managing partner of Portos, in our interview.

You have firmly rejected the accusations by the Pirates that the audit may have been open to outside influence. What are your plans? Are you going to fight back? And have the police or the Czech Bar Association been in touch with you yet?

No one from the police or any other authority has approached us. The accusations are entirely baseless and absurd, of course. We worked on the audit from the start of this year. It’s a professional, precise piece of work, which has now been published. It’s a legal review, not an accounting one, as I’ve seen suggested elsewhere. Anyone can verify this. We have around 1,200 supporting documents, and 10 people worked on it to produce over 300 pages (he picks up the printed audit and drops it weightily on the table – ed.).

An audit like this isn’t something you can negotiate over. The conclusions are exact, based on a clear structure set by the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs as the client. We were required to – and did – follow that framework since January.

From the website: Seznam Zprávy

Author: Matěj Nejedlý