Police shelve investigation into Czech Gripens deal

"A resolution shelving the case was issued today," anti-corruption service spokesman Roman Skrepek told the server, adding that it meant that the police had not found sufficient evidence to file any charge.

This decision on the Gripen deal was made for a second time, Aktualne.cz writes.

The investigation was shelved for the first time in the early 2000s, when detectives said bribery had been uncovered during the talks on the deal, but the perpetrators could not be incriminated.

The new verdict was meted out briefly after Aktualne.cz said that the U.S. FBI had taken interest in the case.

Two former managers of the Austrian financial group Erste want to bring the lease of the Swedish fighters Gripen by Prague to the U.S. Federal Court and prove that the deal involved suspicious transactions and flow of money aside the official payments, Aktualne.cz said last week.

It said the FBI enquired into the case at the suggestion of Hans Leitner and Peter Andahazy, whom Erste, which has a New York banking licence, dismissed earlier this year.

The suspicion around the Gripen lease is part of the accusation saying that Erste Bank bribed politicians in privatisation deals in Central and Eastern Europe, including CS privatisation. Leitner and Andahazy reportedly plan to file a lawsuit by the end of the year.

In February 2007, Swedish detectives started enquiring into the purchase and lease of Gripens by the Czech Republic, and the Swiss police joined the investigations a few months later, at the request of the British anti-corruption police.

In 2004 the Czechs leased 14 Gripens worth 20 billion crowns from Sweden. One year later the Gripens arrived in the Czech Republic, replacing the air force's outdated Soviet-made MiG-21s.

($1 = 17.554 crowns)

Author: ČTK
www.ctk.cz