Rath says his arrest is a police trap
Prague, May 17 (CTK) – MP and former regional governor David Rath, who faces corruption charges, believes that he has fallen into a police trap and that his case has a political core, he says in a statement his defence counsel Adam Cerny gave to CTK yesterday.
Rath, who has been arrested and taken into custody, says he feels like a political prisoner, and compares his case to the imprisonment of former Ukrainian prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko by the present Kyiv regime.
The police have accused and jailed eight people, including Rath, who are suspected of manipulating public tenders in Central Bohemia of which Rath was governor until Wednesday when he left the post as well as the senior opposition Social Democratic Party (CSSD).
According to the media information, the police monitored the suspects since October, wiretapped their phones and bugged the places at which they were meeting.
“The spying might have undoubtedly served to gain information enabling to set a trap for me, which has also happened. This is what I consider the political core of the affair. Based on a political impulse, a complaint has been used to launch an extensive action against blameless people,” Rath said in the statement.
Interior Minister Jan Kubice (unaffiliated) previously ruled out the possibility of the police being influenced in connection with Rath’s case.
After being accused by the police, Rath left the CSSD and resigned as Central Bohemia governor. However, he has kept his mandate as a Chamber of Deputies member.
That is why the Chamber of Deputies will decide at its next session, starting on June 5, on his release for criminal prosecution.
In his statement yesterday, Rath says he “was ready” to resign as an MP. He says he wanted to do so in person at the lower house’s plenary session at which he wanted to acquaint the MPs and the public with his interpretation of his case.
“The governing power seems to be afraid of this, therefore they have gagged me,” Rath said, cited by Cerny.
He said in his case the law enforcement bodies had been “set to follow a suitable direction and they were incited to unseen activeness and unusual steps.”
Usually the police are not so active, but in this case they launched an extensive action. “There was the burdensome Rath, that is why a trap had to be prepared for him hardly to avoid,” Rath said.
The police caught Rath on Monday carrying seven million crowns in cash in a box. He has dismissed the bribery accusations and said he believed that there was wine in the box.
According to the media’s unofficial information, the police uncovered further millions of crowns in a cache in Rath’s house.
In his statement yesterday, Rath speaks about “a media hunt” for him and “myths about millions of crowns beneath the floor and about automatic machine guns.”
“I can see a parallel between my case and that of Yulia Tymoshenko. She, too, has been imprisoned and faces corruption charges,” he said.
Tymoshenko serves a seven-year sentence in prison, imposed on her for signing allegedly disadvantageous gas import contract with Russia in her capacity as prime minister.
Rath said he has come to terms with his situation and knows that his political career has ended “irrespective the truth.”
It is not only him but whole Czech society that has lost freedom. “What happened to me now, and many rejoice at it, may happen to anyone of you,” Rath said.
($1=19.991 crowns)