Update: 26/04/2024 11:33
Issued by: 26/04/2024, 11:33
Pilsen – The court’s procedure in approving plea agreements with the four defendants as well as the actions of the public prosecutor during the entire hearing of the case are being criticized by the defense attorneys of the former vice-chairman of the Football Association of the Czech Republic (FAČR) Roman Berber today at the court in Pilsen. A year after the start of the trial, in which the public prosecutor indicted 21 people and the Slavoj Vyšehrad club for influencing second and third league matches in favor of Vyšehrad, the negotiations are reaching their goal. Three of Berbr’s defense attorneys will deliver the closing speeches today, Berbr himself will speak, and some other defendants will also have the last word. The court should deliver the verdict on June 19.
Another of the main defendants, former player and official Michal Káník, spoke in front of Berbra’s defense attorneys, to whom public prosecutor Jan Scholle proposed a prison sentence of six years and eight months in addition to a fine and ban on activity. Káník categorically denied that there was an organized criminal group in football that influenced matches.
The very existence of such a group is the most serious point of the indictment. “The whole action is meant to remove Roman Berbr from football, and the rest of us were in the wrong place at the wrong time. My statement was the same throughout, so I don’t understand the proposal of the prosecutor’s sentence, which is completely inadequate and liquidating,” he said Buzzard.
The judge also read the closing speech of Bronislav Šerák, the defense attorney of former official Martin Svoboda, nicknamed Chřestýš. He also categorically denied the blame for influencing the match. He particularly criticized the testimony of one of the main defendants, former judge Tomáš Grímm, who testified as a cooperating accused and negotiated a conditional and financial sentence with the prosecutor.
Šerák called Grimm’s statement, which became the basis of the indictment, a fabrication. “And the police made up the story. Grímm then entered into a special agreement to avoid punishment,” Judge Vladimír Žák read from the closing speech of Svoboda’s defense attorney.
Lukáš Bohuslav, Berbro’s defense attorneys, was the first to give a half-hour speech, which focused on the plea agreements that Scholle concluded with the four defendants and which were approved by the court last year. Bohuslav criticized the court for having, in violation of the law, changed the text of the agreements that the public prosecutor concluded with the defendants. “The court co-created those agreements in a certain sense. Changing the description of the act is one of the most serious violations of the criminal code, the court simply cannot afford that,” said the defense attorney.
He also criticized the court for not asking the defendants a series of questions imposed by the criminal code when approving the agreements. The questions are meant to show that the defendant knows what he is doing when he negotiates a deal. These are questions about whether the defendant knows what he is charged with, what his legal qualifications are, what the possible penalty rates and consequences of the accepted agreement are, and whether he entered into the agreement voluntarily and without coercion.
Defense attorney Michal Sýkora took up the floor, and he introduced his speech by saying that the court filled in the blank spaces that the prosecution may have deliberately omitted with the evidence it provided. He continued by criticizing the work of public prosecutor Scholle. “It was a surprise to us how argumentatively weak the speech he gave in his closing speech. We expected a careful and detailed summary of the evidence presented. We only received a reference to the previously presented indictment, we received speculations, half-truths, rhetorical questions and evaluations. The public prosecutor he did not deal with proof at all, only peripherally,” said Sýkora.
His closing speech continues, he discusses, for example, individual matches that were allegedly influenced according to the indictment.
