The opposition ANO and SPD will demand the resignation of the coalition government at Thursday’s lower house urgent session on the controversial donation of large amounts of bitcoin to the Justice Ministry, the two parties’ deputy leaders, Karel Havlicek and Radim Fiala, told Czech Television yesterday.
“We will want the government to find sufficient self-reflection and resign,” Havlicek said on the political discussion programme Questions from Vaclav Moravec. He said the current cabinet could remain in power until the October elections, but should not take any more major decisions.
If the coalition government did not resign, he said, “we are very strongly considering calling a no-confidence vote in the government.”
“We will support an extraordinary session, we will also support a vote of no confidence in the government,” said Fiala, deputy leader of the far-right SPD.
Lower house speaker Jan Skopecek (ODS) dismissed the opposition’s plans as theatre in the campaign ahead of parliamentary elections in October.
The Justice Ministry accepted CZK 1 billion of bitcoin from a man convicted of drug trafficking. Justice Minister Pavel Blazek (ODS) offered his resignation over the affair on Friday.
Skopecek said he can see no reason for the cabinet to resign, given that Blazek has already resigned over the donation.
On Friday, ANO called for an urgent meeting of the lower house to discuss the bitcoin donation to the ministry. MPs for government parties also support the session.
Czech Fiscal Council chair Mojmir Hampl said that the bitcoin donation case raises a number of technical questions that he believes will not be answered during political negotiations in the pre-election atmosphere. Hampl noted that it is not surprising that this type of case has emerged in the Czech Republic, as the country is currently a world power when it comes to crypto assets.
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The cryptocurrency was donated to the ministry by Tomas Jirikovsky, who operated an online marketplace for drug sales and was imprisoned in 2017 for embezzlement, drug trafficking and illegal trading of weapons. He was released from prison in 2021. He donated to the ministry 30% of the bitcoins from his e-wallet that had been confiscated by the police and returned to him after his release from prison. Blazek argued that courts had not proven that the remaining bitcoins came from criminal activity. He said his ministry sold the cryptocurrency at auctions for CZK 956.8 million.
According to the opposition parties and the junior coalition Mayors and Independents (STAN), the Czech state should not use the money until its origin is proven.
The case is being investigated by the police unit dealing with organised crime. The High Prosecutor’s Office in Olomouc is investigating the case related to the donation on suspicion of three crimes, including abuse of official authority and laundering of proceeds of crime.
The iRozhlas server of Czech Radio wrote that transactional analyses showed that there were many times more funds in the wallet than stated, about CZK 12.5 billion.