The Supreme Court has begun reviewing the judgment in the case of the contract for the repair of Kuks

Brno - The ruling regarding three men convicted for a manipulated contract for the reconstruction of the baroque complex in Kuks has begun to be reviewed by the Supreme Court. Petr Semeniuk is to serve six years in prison, while Dalibor Dubový and Zdeněk Fučík will serve two years less. All three filed appeals at the end of last summer, and only now have their applications along with the case file arrived in Brno at the highest instance, as reported by ČTK from the judicial database. The average duration of proceedings in criminal cases is 42 days.

The contract for the revitalization of Kuks cost more than 322 million crowns, most of which was funded by the European Union. The tender was won in 2013 by the Hochtief.CZ - Gema Art Group association.

According to the verdict, Semeniuk took advantage of his acquaintance with the then-employee of the National Heritage Institute, Dubový, who was also the vice-chairman of the evaluation committee for the tender. Dubový sent him internal information regarding the preparation of the tender conditions through emails from 2011 to 2012. Semeniuk promptly forwarded this information to Gema's statutory director Fučík and to a member of the company's supervisory board, Kateřina Richterová, who later received a suspended sentence.

Gema had access to the tender documentation and the proposed contract for the work in advance, and through Semeniuk, influenced the documents so that the tender met their interests as closely as possible. They then used the acquired information to create the winning bid.

According to the ruling, Fučík promised Semeniuk a reward for securing victory in the tender. However, Gema subsequently refused to pay the man the money, prompting Semeniuk to create a false promissory note. He presented it as legitimate to another company, which filed it in court, leading the police to start investigating the situation.

The courts found no evidence that the second company from the winning consortium, namely Hochtief, was involved in any way in the criminal activities. Likewise, there is no evidence that there was a financial motive driving Dubový's actions. The chief engineer of the reconstruction testified that he did not understand the issues related to public procurement at all. For this reason, he stated that he took advantage of the offered assistance from his acquaintance Semeniuk.