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Court refuses to extradite fugitive

South African ruling frees Krejčíř with bizarre reasoning

By James Scanlon
For The Prague Post
March 12th, 2008 issue

A recent ruling by a South African court to refuse the extradition of international fugitive Radovan Krejčíř back to the Czech Republic has caused further embarrassment and frustration for Interior Minister Ivan Langer and anyone involved in years of attempts to bring him to justice here.
Billionaire Krejčíř is wanted for a long list of crimes ranging from tax evasion and counterfeiting to extortion and conspiracy to murder. But, last month, the Kempton Park Magistrates Court in Johannesburg dismissed all charges due to the lack of evidence and the fact that the crimes allegedly committed in the Czech Republic are not recognized by South African law. Furthermore, the court strongly suggested that there was a political conspiracy behind those charges resulting from Krejčíř’s involvement with former Czech Prime Minister Stanislav Gross.
The story of Krejčíř’s flight from the law first hit the headlines in 2005, when he gave Czech police the slip as they searched his luxury villa in Prague (leading to criticisms of police incompetence and suspicions of bribery). Although sentenced to six and a half years in absentia for fraud by an Ostrava court in 2006, Krejčíř escaped to the Seychelles, where the lack of an extradition agreement made him immune to Czech prosecution.
It wasn’t until Krejčíř, rather oddly, decided to move to South Africa in April 2007, where there is an extradition agreement, that Czech authorities were given another chance to catch him. According to Justice Ministry spokeswoman Zuzana Kuncová, his intention in moving there was to “make new [business] contacts.”
Upon landing at OR Tambo Airport in Johannesburg, traveling on a fraudulent passport under the name Egbert Jules Savy, he was arrested and taken into custody on an Interpol red-notice charge (provisional arrest with a view to extradition). Soon afterward, the court released Krejčíř on the condition that he report to police regularly — a requirement that was dropped weeks later, raising further bribery suspicions.
In the nine-page ruling last month, the judge of Kempton Park Magistrates Court, Stephen Holzen underlined its reasons for — and right to — the refusal of extradition.
“The procedure with regard to extradition and provisional arrest shall be governed solely by the law of the requested party, that being the Republic of South Africa,” the ruling stated. Consequently, Krejčíř’s involvement in offenses listed as “abusing information in business relations” as well as “abuse of revolving credit” and “credit fraud,” which all involved huge financial transactions, were dismissed as having no comparable offense in South Africa. Even the legitimacy of the Ostrava court’s sentence was considered not “legally effective” because Krejčíř had begun an appeals process against it that had not yet been exhausted.
Other dismissed offenses include four counts of counterfeiting, the most serious being that of 250 million Swiss francs. According to judgment documentation, the money was packed with a genuine bank note at the top and bottom of each pile and 18 pieces of paper in between. Each pile was then bound in bank paper tape, packed together and vacuum sealed. The South African court dismissed this as “monopoly money,” stating there was no possibility of Krejčíř being “criminally charged in South Africa for counterfeiting or forgery on these facts.”
Another charge is that of fraud involving two promissory notes for 60 million Kč each, drawn up by a Jakub Konečný and former Prime Minister Gross. The latter, who for some bizarre reason is described as being “currently imprisoned for fraud,” is, more disturbingly, identified repeatedly in the ruling as a former president of the Czech Republic.
The court also dismissed a charge in the 2002 kidnapping of Konečný (which involved death threats if he refused to sign various bills of exchange) as being based on “hearsay evidence.”
Dead end … for now
In his summing up, Holzen accepted Krejčíř’s claim that the charges were politically motivated due to, “dealings he had with the former president of the Czech Republic, a Mr. Stanislav Gross.” The ruling continued, “These dealings went horribly awry in 2002, when Gross became president. It is peculiar to note that the respondent [Krejčíř] was never suspected of committing any offense since the Czech Republic abandoned its Marxist economic regime in 1989, right through until 2002, then suddenly the respondent was subjected to house searches which do not appear to have been in accordance with basic human rights.”
The judge again pointed to other flaws in the Czech judicial system, describing the times Krejčíř was “detained without trial for lengthy periods twice and suddenly accused of committing some rather contrived crimes dating back to 1993, 1996, 1998 and so forth. It’s hardly surprising that the respondent fled the country in 2005.”
Despite the South African court’s ruling, the Czech Justice Ministry is eager to maintain diplomatic relations with the country.
“This is the decision of an independent sovereign court and we have to respect it,” said Kuncová. Still, the Czech Republic remains determined to pursue the case further. “The court in South Africa doesn’t agree with the views of the Czech witnesses who appeared before the judge,” Kuncová continued. “Krejčíř only gave the judge basic information. He didn’t go into any real detail. The judge was only going by what Krejčíř said to him in court during the hearing. The judge didn’t take the witnesses into consideration.”
For its part, the Interior Ministry declined a request for comment.
Not surprisingly, one of the first things Krejčíř told media outside the Johannesburg court was, “Say hello to Ivan Langer for me!”
Adding more insult to injury, it seems Krejčíř won’t be coming home for a very long time, if ever.
“The prosecutor of South Africa has interposed an appeal last week,” Kuncová says. “We can’t guess when the higher court will make a decision about that.”

James Scanlon can be reached at news@praguepost.com


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