Prague will pay a fine for the Troja Bridge, but will also file a lawsuit

Prague - Prague will pay a fine of 11 million Czech crowns, which was imposed on it in March by the Office for the Protection of Competition (ÚOHS) for the construction of the Troja Bridge connecting to the Blanka Tunnel. However, it will also file an administrative lawsuit challenging the decision in court. The council unanimously approved this course of action today, said Prague councilor Jan Wolf (KDU-ČSL/Trojkoalice) at a press conference after the meeting in response to a CTK inquiry.

According to the office, Prague expanded the original contract to include construction work for the new Troja Bridge without using any form of procurement procedure required by law.

This excluded competition among companies. The chairman of the ÚOHS, Petr Rafaj, stated in March that this resulted in the construction of a completely different bridge that did not correspond to the original design either visually or in terms of cost. The original price was supposed to be around 500 million crowns, while the new one cost nearly a billion crowns more.

The city council under the leadership of Tomáš Hudeček (now an independent, in the TOP 09 club) already asserted that the company Metrostav was building a different bridge than the one designed. Therefore, it cannot reimburse the invoices. For this reason, the city also initiated arbitration. The arbitration court ruled that Prague must pay the amount requested by Metrostav.

The Regional Court in Brno, to which the city will file the lawsuit, can annul the ÚOHS's decision or reduce the fine. The city has until May 16 to file the lawsuit and pay the fine, unless the court rules that filing a lawsuit has a suspensive effect on the payment.

The Blanka Tunnel, the construction of which was commissioned by the political leadership under Mayor Pavel Bém (ODS), was supposed to be opened in 2011. The project cost at least six billion crowns more than planned. The arbitration court has already addressed disputes between Prague and the construction company Metrostav, involving amounts in the order of billions of crowns.