Nineties scam of former footballer with Prague apartments. We know who was involved, said councilor Zábranský.
Prague councilor Adam Zábranský convened a special press conference, where he informed about uncovered frauds within the rental of city apartments of the capital. Although no harm was done to Prague by the fraudulent act, tenants lost millions of crowns due to the scam. At the same time, fraudulent practices were discovered during the allocation of apartments under the administration of a joint-stock company owned by Prague Trade Centre Prague.
Details of the whole case were revealed by investigative journalist Jaroslav Kmenta at the beginning of July. In his text, he exposed former Sparta Prague player and 2000 Olympian Adam Petrouš, who hooked up a man of Iranian origin, Mehrzad Seyrim, and his acquaintances with several apartments managed by Trade Centre Prague.
For this service, he was supposed to cash in 12.5 million crowns for 5 apartments. People paid him million sums with the promise of privatizing funds in the near future. However, this will not occur in the foreseeable future, according to Adam Zábranský, the Prague councillor for property, transparency and legislation.
"The main protagonist is Mr. Petrouš, but it would be naive to assume that he is the only one who tried to bribe within the attempts to privatize flats. Neither Prague nor city districts have the power to prevent these scams. However, we want to warn everyone not to engage in negotiations with private individuals and pay millions for the promise that they will facilitate the privatization of city apartments for cheap,"
Zábranský warned.
The capital city of Prague did not suffer any financial loss as part of the scams, but its good reputation was damaged, as was mentioned at the press conference and at the same time the city leadership revealed who collaborated on fraudulent trading with city rental apartments.
In his text, Kmenta already warned that the smoothness with which Petrouš Seyrim secured a rental apartment indicates cooperation with officials who manage the housing fund of the capital. Zábranský stated that the main figure in this aspect of the fraud is one senior official, whose identity he knows but cannot reveal due to ongoing police investigations.
"We are copying habits in the housing market. We publish advertisements on the Portal Pahy and Sreality. We have identified several apartments that were not disclosed and we analyzed why this happened, whether it was some administrative blunder. We have changed the procedure, now an audit trail is being created, where we know how the whole process was carried out. As of last year, everything goes through our form which preserves the audit trail,"
Commented on the suspicious circumstance Josef Bláha, Chairman of the Board of TRADE CENTRE PRAHA a.s.
The company manages only a small part of the city's housing stock. About 300 apartments, of which some are not rented, due to poor technical conditions and waiting for investment in reconstruction. Some rented apartments also have a worse technical condition, not excluding toilets in the corridor, as Bláha pointed out, which is one of the reasons for lower rent in these properties, although they are in lucrative addresses in the center of Prague.
Primarily, the company manages commercial spaces owned by the city. "Trade Center Prague is a joint-stock company owned by Prague. It doesn't own anything, it manages and provides services for commercial spaces, typically apartment houses in the center, with retail at the bottom and office spaces on the upper floors," Bláha explained further.
According to Zábranský, only a fraction of these apartments were rented outside the usual advertising scheme. At the same time, the city management has mapped out activities, where leading employees directly instructed responsible employees not to place specific apartments on advertising portals.
"Apartments that were not advertised and rented were approximately 10-20. The exact number is not retrievable, the previous management of the company did not have archived information on how and where properties are offered. It's absurd, I admit, and I don't know how it was such a mess,"
said Zábranský directly. At the same time, he appreciated Kmenta's work and the disclosure of fraudulent activity with a false promise of privatization. The Pirate politician already in the last election term "despite some resistance," ended further privatization of apartments in Prague and thus possibly prevented further frauds. The offer for privatization in this context will likely have a fraudulent nature in Prague.
