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Court impounds army property worth billions

Mix-up leads to military hassles

December 5th, 2007 issue

(Updated Dec. 7, 2007) -- A court executor has put a lien on army property worth billions of crowns, due to an invoice by power company Západočeské energetika (ZČE) for 1,601 Kč ($90), according to Mladá fronta Dnes newspaper.

To add insult to injury, the invoice had been paid, the newspaper reported.

Due to a mistake in its records, the power company had erroneously sued the military for failure to pay the invoice, and although it lost the case, the judge ordered the army to pay 4,725 Kč in court costs, anyway.

The military appealed the verdict, but the court lost the documents. Ministry officials could only look on in dismay as court executor Daniel Mika put a lien on its property.

“It's like a bad dream. I lecture at the law faculty, but I would never have thought it possible that, on the basis of a claim for a few hundred crowns – which doesn't even exist – an executor could put a lien on (military) property worth billions," Radek Šmerda, deputy defense minister, told MfD.

"He could have impounded a computer or a TV set," attorney Jan Černý said, adding that similar miscarriages of justice, albeit on a smaller scale, lead to many company bankruptcies and human tragedies. He said that the loss of a file is of no surprise to him, since he has seen courts lose entire cases.


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