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In the past years, Denisa Hlubocká made a living as a real estate agent. She specialized, among other things, in real estate in the center of Brno.
Seznam Zpravám managed to obtain and study fresh allegations in the case of trading with Brno city apartments. In it, Hlubocká has a specific position. The police document says that she confessed during questioning – admitting that she had a significant competitive advantage over her colleagues in the industry. She offered apartments in the center of Brno for a fraction of their market price. The customers were not allowed to mind that the essence of the business was that with the help of bribes, the needy would skip over the long waiting list for social housing.
The order was decided by politicians from the ODS and ČSSD coalition in the management of the Brno-střed district, where the Civic Democrats had a mayor. The current mayor of Brno Markéta Vaňková, her deputy Robert Kerndl and another ODS politician Otakar Bradáč were also councilors there. He is currently being prosecuted for handling city property in another branch of the housing case and has not yet given evidence.
The prosecuted trio, of which Hlubocká was a part, scored points in convincing Brno politicians. In 2013, in violation of the rules, the councilors even sanctified the request of Vaňková’s relatives to transfer the 300 meters of housing they had previously received from Brno-střed to other people. As it turned out later, they were white horses.
Last November, it ended with a raid by the National Headquarters against Organized Crime. Hlubocká managed to give the lucrative premises after his brother-in-law Vaňková. And the police accuse her of collecting a bribe of 3.9 million crowns for this, as follows from the text of the accusation, which Nauzal has at their disposal.
Along with Hlubocká, according to Seznam Zpráv findings, Pavel Hubálek, a key cooperating accused in the housing case, who directed the police to Hlubocká, is also being prosecuted. And Hubálk’s former girlfriend Monika Janošková, a good friend of Hlubocká, is also accused. But Janošková refused to testify in front of the criminal investigators.
New statement: We collected bribes
In Hlubocká, however, the police were more successful. She faces up to six years in prison for participating in corruption, even though she partially cooperated with the police after her arrest. And according to the statement of the charges, she admitted that she had bribed herself and acquired three properties in three years in the competition of hundreds of applicants. The police officers thus have a second important testimony of how a possible system of manipulations worked in Brno.
“Denisa Hlubocká described in detail the circumstances of obtaining real estate for rent, the circumstances of the transfer of funds to Monica Janošková, and also described in detail the methods of searching for clients who were interested in obtaining a municipal apartment for rent for a bribe,” the police officers summarized her statements in the protocol.
Already in 2012, Hlubocká – according to her claim for a bribe of 550 thousand crowns – received an apartment on Renneská třída for rent. The politicians even privatized the house to the tenants for a fraction of the market price, and she immediately sold the apartment at the market price.
“In this way, Denisa Hlubocká verified that Pavel Hubálek and Monika Janošková could, for a bribe, secure the allocation of a municipal apartment for rent and also its subsequent privatization,” the police transcribed her questioning about how the real estate agent’s cooperation with the above-mentioned pair began.
However, Hlubocká also told the police that she subsequently gave the couple another bribe of 1.2 million for two more properties.
Photo: List of News
This is how the councilors knocked down the city apartment of Hlubocka’s mother.
In 2013, the councilors allocated one lease in Botanická Street to her mother, the lease was subsequently transferred to Hlubocká Street.
“He has been using the apartment irregularly up until now, as he spends most of his time in Greece and receives housing allowances to pay the rent and services connected to the apartment,” explained another part of the statement by the Hlubok police.
In another case, the entrepreneur acquired a non-residential space for her company in Kounicova Street, which she subsequently sublet unofficially and in violation of the rules.
Her business partner Janošková was also successful in acquiring city real estate. To this day, according to reporters’ inquiries, he has a permanent residence in the same townhouse in Hlinky Street, where Vaňk’s relatives also obtained housing from politicians.
How was it with Vaňková’s housing?
And Janošková was able to arrange for her cousin’s wife a city apartment in Hrčnířská Street with cheap rent, because her relative, the town hall, undertook to repair it at its own expense. At the same time, she didn’t have the money for it – it was a saleswoman with a million dollar foreclosure, as the relative herself told the police. As well as the fact that it was Janošková who secured the apartment for her, hiding stacks of documents in it from the police.
“Kids, don’t be silly…”
From the phones seized from the prosecuted trio, the detectives extracted their text messages, in which they jointly dealt with individual city apartments. It also follows from them that in 2013 Hlubocká and Janošková planned how they would monetize the 300 square meters in the apartment building in Hlinky Street. And this despite the fact that the opportunity to rent them was not published anywhere. At that time, the premises were still owned by the Vaňk family.
“Nothing will be paid to the city anymore. It includes purchase + apartment 120m 3+1 + garage + garden. Soils 46, 46a (one soil). The price is 4,500,000 CZK now for this one. I will know the rest of the apartments that are available tomorrow. It’s even nicer than the one we got the keys from!!! Have a nice good night. I hope you will sleep well,” Janošková Hlubocké wrote, for example, in August 2013 about the townhouse in Hlinky Street.
And she finally found “customers”. These are doctors to whom the group promised the premises, which the Vaňk relatives had given up, for a bribe of 3.9 million. Petr Hýža and Renata Marečková planned a plastic surgery clinic on the site instead of city social housing.
Clinic for a plastic surgeon
According to her testimony, Hlubocká looked for customers to whom she subsequently offered apartments among acquaintances. She recognized Hyža as her plastic surgeon. He originally wanted to buy premises for a new clinic elsewhere in Brno for 11 million. “Kids, don’t be silly, I’ll get you something better,” Hýža quoted Húbocká’s reaction when he confided in her to the police during the interrogation.
Seznam News contacted Hýža, he hung up the phone immediately after the performance. “I don’t know where you got your information from,” he replied when asked if he felt guilty, saying he was passing everything on to his lawyer.
The business in Hlinky Street did not work out in the end and Hubálek returned the money to the doctors, but both face up to six years in prison for bribery if convicted. Although they defend themselves by saying, for example, that they thought the money was used as severance pay for the original tenants of the apartments and had no idea it was a bribe.
“I don’t feel guilty. In any case. I will not comment on it,” Marečková told Seznam Zprávám.
However, the investigators believe that it could not have been severance pay. “Both fully understood that the funds handed over by them as a bribe could not be used to legally broker a rental agreement,” the police document states.
Who brought the information out of the town hall?
As part of her cooperation with the detectives, Hlubocká also provided stacks of documents, which she says she originally hid from the police. Among them were the documents that the Vaňk relatives subsequently attached to the applications that related to the city apartments allocated to them.
Hlubocká also gave the police a table with a list of other clients who had rented municipal apartments. And she stated that she herself accepted bribes from them, in several cases it was 350 thousand crowns. The police are investigating these people in separate cases. Hlubocká also had copies of their requests, which they sent to the town hall.
However, with the obtained documents, the police also prove that the group had access to internal documents from the Brno-střed town hall. These were, for example, non-anonymized minutes from the council, which contain the names of people to whom politicians have allocated apartments.
Or a non-public list of houses that politicians have decided will be privatized. And it was therefore highly interesting for interested parties to obtain a lease from the city in them, because then they would have a priority right to buy apartments for a fraction of the market price.
The detectives do not specify who exactly and how manipulated the allocation of apartments for the group’s customers at the town hall. They are checking it further. It is not possible to read how any of the politicians in the municipal district council voted from the minutes. And Vaňková, for example, claims that she does not remember it.
Under the apartment allocation itself is the signature of the then mayor Libor Šťástka from the ODS. For example, he claimed to the police during interrogation that he did not know that he was signing a lease for his councilor’s relatives.
In the same election period, however, according to earlier findings of the media, his brother-in-law also acquired a city apartment for rent, and just after the elections, his secretary. Together with the town hall secretary, he leads the housing cooperatives that ODS politicians let privatize some town houses. The police are investigating that too.
