LN: The outgoing director of the National Heritage Institute claims that the state forced him to break the law

Prague - The resigning general director of the National Heritage Institute (NPÚ) Pavel Jerie stated that the main reason for his departure from his position was the unwillingness to participate in the threat of the tunneling of monuments under the auspices of the Ministry of Culture. This is reported by today's Lidové noviny (LN). In June, Jerie offered Culture Minister Václav Jehlička his resignation at the end of November; he will manage the office until his successor is appointed.
    "I was under enormous pressure. Since March, I was being forced to violate the law in a way that can be labeled as a Mlynář model," Jerie stated.
    LN reports that according to this model, the Ministry of Culture would select four significant state chateaus managed by NPÚ, and Jerie would place this state real estate into some newly established legal entity (the ministry calls it an interest association of legal entities) with his signature. This company would then request hundreds of millions in European grants for the restoration and development of this heritage site and would manage them itself.
    According to LN, Jerie resisted this. He knew that if he placed state properties into a commercial company, and that company went bankrupt, the liquidator could settle the company’s debts by selling this heritage site. By alienating state property, Jerie would commit a crime and could face imprisonment. The Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Regional Development's analyses supported him, the paper writes.
    The biggest dispute is over the restoration of the chateau in Litomyšl, parts of the chateaus in Telč and Lednice, and the chateau in Jindřichův Hradec. They are to be loaned for eight years and used in new ways. These buildings are among 19 monuments that are to receive six to seven billion crowns from European structural funds by 2013.
    Jana Vohralíková from the Ministry of Culture, who is responsible for these projects, labeled Jerie's arguments about law violations as nonsense based on half-truths. According to her, Jerie disagrees with the new concept, and therefore he is inventing various reasons to complicate the matter.