The second oldest profession

Note: This is the extended interview with Kristýna Koči. An abbreviated version appeared in print on June 22.

It may have seemed impossible just a few months ago, but the storm surrounding former Public Affairs (VV) MP Kristýna Koči has been relatively calm in recent weeks.
The 26-year-old, one-time rising political star (and model in the VV’s controversial 2011 pinup calendar) was the head of the VV’s MP club and the party’s chief negotiator within the tripartite government coalition – which also includes the Civic Democrats (ODS) and TOP 09 – when she filed a criminal complaint against the party’s informal leader and chief financier, Vít Bárta. She accused him of giving her 500,000 Kč in exchange for her loyalty to the VV.
Now that she’s serving out her time in office as, essentially, a woman without a party, she’s begun to question her future in politics, as well as her admittedly “naive” decision to run for office in the first place.
After agreeing to speak with The Prague Post at a Mála Strana coffee shop, she asked to relocate the interview to her office, where it would “be safer.” Since blowing the whistle on Bárta she says she has been spied on, followed and recorded in her home by Bárta’s operatives. Though she finally – and surprisingly – agreed to meet in a very public café near her office on Sněmovní, she appeared nervous and continually looked over her shoulder walking to and from her office. But despite her fears, she says she is convinced of Bárta’s guilt (“He will go to jail,” she said). And when the dust settles, she hopes her name, which spent much of the winter and spring as headline fodder, will be cleared.

The Prague Post: Where did things go wrong with you and the VV?

Kristýna Koči: It wasn’t one specific thing or situation. I had a chance to see the role of Vít Bárta over a period of time and I realized he is a liar and trying to corrupt people and abuse the system.

TPP: Is Vít Bárta a criminal?

KK: Yes, absolutely.

TPP: How so?

KK: He’s abusing the ministries, he’s trying to corrupt me and our other MPs.

TPP: You said today you would rather meet in your office instead of in public because it would be safer. Do you not feel safe in public?

KK: No, I don’t feel safe. There’s always someone watching me. It’s been that way from the moment I left VV.

TPP: Why are they watching you?

KK: I’m one of the main informers for the police.

TPP: So since you went to the police with your information about Vít Bárta and accused him of bribing you, you’ve been watched by his operatives or people with ABL?

KK: Yes.

TPP: Are you being recorded?

KK: Yes.

TPP: In your home?

KK: Yes. And on my mobile phone. This is one of the reasons I think [Bárta] will eventually go to jail.

TPP: Do you have any relationships with anyone left in VV?

KK: Not anymore. I’m really sad about this. I was thinking that we were friends, but maybe not. I’m someone who is able to divide my work and my personal life, but maybe they can’t. Some of them were my best friends, or so I thought. Now they don’t even say hello to me. I’m still the same person I was before all this happened.

TPP: Were you approached by the ODS to recruit your fellow MPs to leave VV?

KK: Absolutely not. I decided in February to leave the VV and I was trying to think of how to do it or what my other options were. One of the possibilities was to try to democratize the VV and try to minimize the role of Vít Bárta. But that was impossible. I was just trying to figure out the best way possible to leave or to make the situation better. So I did talk to other MPs, yes. But not because the ODS asked me to or not because I was trying to start another party or defect to another party. No way. In February, I thought I was the only one who had these feelings and in March I found out there were others. There were at least 11 of us who had these same thoughts that the party was corrupt. It’s hard to describe how we felt. It’s feeling like you are not your own. Someone is writing your speeches, someone is telling you what you have to say, how you have to vote.

TPP: Who was telling you this? Bárta?

KK: Absolutely, yes.

TPP: Not Radek John?

KK: (Laughs) No! Not Radek John he’s just …

TPP: He’s just a face?

KK: Right. He’s just a face.

TPP: So this is Bárta’s party.

KK: Yes. It’s his project, it’s his child.

TPP: Did he make the women of the VV do the calendar?

KK: It was definitely his idea. I was very ashamed. I’m not like that. I’m more conservative. It was very difficult for me to do. To be able to do it, I had to be drunk. I was totally drunk.

TPP: So there was no offer to recruit these MPs away from VV so ODS could keep their majority  and get rid of VV at the same time?

KK: No way. Absolutely not. We all felt that way, but in the VV it’s total paranoia so there was no hope that you could talk freely with them. I wasn’t trying to steal them away, but we would talk about the system being bad and that we had to emancipate, but there the thinking was still that we could try to democratize the VV together.

TPP: So the rumors that you were offered promises of ministry posts or a seat on European Parliament if you could get MPs to leave the party were not true?

KK: No, of course not.

TPP: Many people wondered, when those rumors were flying around, what more you could have possibly wanted at your age. You were in a good position, why get involved in something like that?

KK: That’s the point! Exactly. And that’s the answer: There’s no other position I needed. It was a huge position with a perfect salary. There was no better option for me.

TPP: So this wasn’t about advancing your career or getting more power or more money?

KK: (Laughs) It was absolutely impossible to have more than I had. I was the president of the MP club. This whole experience has made me realize that someone at my age can’t have such a huge position with such responsibility. That was my biggest mistake. I didn’t have the life experience, but I was thinking that I had the ambition, I was hard working, ready to work 24 hours a day. But that wasn’t enough. I didn’t have the experience to be doing what I was doing. That was my lesson.

TPP: Do you think your age and lack of experience made you an easy target to be corrupted?

KK: Not exactly. Vít Bárta corrupted all of the MPs by promising them positions or money or something like that. It’s just Vit Bárta’s system. He’ll find compromising information on you and offer you money and he’ll get you. He has relationships with media – daily Právo and Blesk, for instance are very much for the VV and Bárta – and he’d come to me and tell me he could have them write a positive story about me if I am good. No one can understand what this is like unless they’re living in it. It was the most stressful period of my life. I was seeing a psychiatrist to help me through this and get me ready to leave the VV and become independent. But it’s difficult. Because within the VV we have a special agreement that we have to stay in the party and if we don’t we have to pay Vit Bárta 7 million (crowns).

TPP: You’re saying you have to sign a contract that says you are loyal to VV or you have to pay 7 million crowns to Vít Bárta? Did you have to pay 7 million crowns when you left?

KK: No, because it’s against the constitution and he knows it. If he asks me for the money, I’ll go to constitutional court. If you’re not a lawyer, if you’re young, you can think that this is okay. So it was very difficult to figure out how to get out of the party and stay moral and know that he’s got information about you from when you were 19 you did such-and-such …

TPP: He had information on you from when you were 19?

KK: Yes. That’s the way it works and it makes it difficult to say, “OK, goodbye.” So before I left he was trying to push me to be loyal and trying to make me scared and when it didn’t work, he tried to corrupt me and offered me a half-million crowns.

TPP: He said it was a loan.

KK: (Laughs) I was the president of the MP Club. My salary was 150,000 crowns. I have no debts. If I had to ask for money, I’d ask my parents, not Vit Bárta. The police will show that it wasn’t a loan.

TPP: Is there a document that you sign as a VV MP that says, “I will remain in this party and if I leave I owe you 7 million crowns?”

KK: Yes. You could ask [VV MP Club President] Karolína Peake about it, she’s the author.

TPP: Karolína Peake is the author?

KK: Of course.

TPP: Because she’s a lawyer.

KK: Of course. It’s funny, she wrote the contract as a lawyer but she knows it’s against the constitution.

TPP: So everybody has signed this contract?

KK: Everyone. All of us.

TPP: And when is it signed? After you’re elected?

KK: Before the election.

TPP: So you say, “I’m Kristýna Koči, I’m going to run for MP as a VV candidate” and they give you a document that says, “If you win, you will be serving Vít Bárta …”

KK: Not “serving Vít Bárta” but it’s like they’re telling you that you have to vote all the time with VV and if not, if you won’t work with the party, you have to leave and they will give you a half-million crowns and you let the others from the candidate list be MP and if not, you pay $7 million crowns.

TPP: So what is next for you?

KK: I still hope that there will be an election and I won’t be a candidate. I would like to go back to school and finish because I stopped after the election. Then I’d like to stay in public service, but not as a politician. I don’t think I will run again. I’m so tired. Imagine being 24 and you believe you can change the system, you can do it different, you can do it clean, with other young people.

TPP: Do you feel that plan backfired on you? You’ve been demonized in the media, you don’t have your party anymore, you’ve lost your friends …

KK: It’s the Czech mentality. I have friends from the United States and Canada who admire me for what I’ve accomplished and the Czech people treat me like I’m something evil. I don’t think everybody hates me. I’m still going out with my friends, staying out until 4 o’clock drinking, all that. People come up to me and say, “You’re wonderful!” I get that all the time. No one can believe that there’s someone who can’t be bought. You ask Czech people what they would do if they were offered 500,000 crowns, they would say, “Of course I would take it!” Maybe it’s the communist history. But if someone is giving you money for nothing, it’s not free. Vít Bárta doesn’t just give you money for your wonderful blue eyes. He’s giving you money because he will ask for so much in return and you’ll have to do it. Otherwise he’ll blackmail you. That’s my position.  My friends, my ex-boyfriend couldn’t understand it. They would think that I could make 500,000 crowns on top of my regular salary and have such a wonderful life. But I didn’t want any money. I wanted to do it clean. I want to do what I want to do, not what Vit Bárta wants me to do. I hope it will change. I hope the view of me in the media will change when the police ask Parliament to allow them to execute the charges against Bárta. I think that will change things. I’m just happy it’s not me who has to face this.

TPP: Do you have any regrets?

KK: This disaster taught me that everything has its own time. I should have been more patient. I was too ambitious, I was naïve. I was thinking I could change the world in a few days.

TPP: You were going to be prime minister before you were 30 …

KK: Exactly! That’s what I thought, but I wasn’t ready for all this. I’m still not.