"This is a big problem and a big violation of the law," ODS Justice Minister Jiří Pospíšil said during a speech in the Chamber of Deputies Sept. 29.

Pospíšil said classified security documents showed that several prominent politicians, journalists, police officials, physicians and their families were among those the ČSSD government ordered bugged.

Former Prime Minister and ČSSD Chairman Jiří Paroubek called the allegations "disgusting lies."

A Prague 5 judge has confirmed the wiretapping, saying he approved it on Sept. 4 — the day the ČSSD-led government stepped down to make room for one led by the ODS.

What remains unclear is who ordered the bugs.

The mounting scandal threatened to further scuttle relations between the two dominant political parties four months after a general election plunged politics into chaos and just as Parliament was set to hold an Oct. 3 vote of confidence that would decide the fate of the current government.

The ODS accused the ČSSD of orchestrating a campaign not unlike the widespread surveillance of the communist era. The ČSSD said ODS leaders have provided no evidence.

Parliament members passed a nonbinding resolution Sept. 29 saying Topolánek, Interior Minister Ivan Langer and Deputy Prime Minister Petr Nečas should leave office for failing to prove their party's charges.

Topolánek shrugged off the resolution. The ČSSD called it a victory.

Behind all this is a controversial report delivered by Jan Kubice, a high-ranking officer in the police department's organized crime division, the ÚOOZ, to a security committee of the Chamber of Deputies just before June's general election.

The report detailed connections between the then-ruling ČSSD and organized crime.

He said the ties reached all the way to Paroubek, who was accused in the report, along with other ČSSD leaders, of using political influence to hinder investigations into the deaths of several prominent businessmen, including František Mrázek, who was gunned down in January.

The Kubice report was classified, but details were leaked to the media.

Immediately, ČSSD leaders said the ODS leaked the report on purpose, and have since blamed it for the party's loss — by one percentage point — to the ODS at June's polls.

Paroubek ordered his interior minister, František Bublan, to investigate the leak's source, since it involved the release of classified information.

The ODS said it was the Interior Ministry under the ČSSD that ordered the wiretaps.

The allegations gained ground when Langer, who said he was among those bugged, went public Sept. 20 saying 20 journalists and politicians were under surveillance.

Langer said the wiretaps were legal, but that they involved a host of people not directly involved in the Kubice matter.

Supreme State Attorney Renata Vesecká, appointed by the ČSSD, followed Langer's statements by saying it was unlikely that the number he alleged was accurate.

In fact, more were bugged.

In recent days, Tomáš Almer, director of the police's wiretapping unit, has released details of the 46 phones belonging to eight people that had been bugged, saying he felt Vesecká had been misleading.

"The main thing is that there was no violation of the law, as any tapping carried out in connection with the [Kubice] case was ordered legally," Vesecká's spokesman František Tlapák told The Prague Post. "As for the debate of how many tappings actually happened, this is purely of a technical character and has no impact on their legal status."

On the same day Langer made his statements, Sept. 20, a Prague 5 judge who initially approved the 46 wiretaps canceled 31 of them. No reason was given.

Police President Vladislav Husák said his office was not pursuing the Kubice case, but that the Interior Ministry's inspection division was.

The Interior Ministry confirmed that it is investigating the leak. But just how doggedly is unclear.

Langer has fired most of the ministry's inspection heads. State Attorney Michal Zachystal, who is also investigating the case, said the ministry refused to hand over the Kubice report Sept. 29.