President Václav Klaus has exercised his right as Czech head of state and granted pardons to 14 people, including Anna Benešová, the former director of Metropolitan University Prague (MUP), who had been convicted of bribery and embezzlement.
Klaus’ spokesman Radim Ochvat said the president took into account Benešová’s need to care for her seriously ill husband and the fact that she had never before been charged with a crime. Another eight women were pardoned for humanitarian reasons, as they had young children to look after; another is confined to a wheelchair.
The list of those pardoned included people sentenced for fraud, theft, malpractice, embezzlement and copyright violation. In some cases, the length of time between when the crimes were committed and when a sentence was handed down was cited as a factor, according to a breakdown compiled by the news server Týden.cz.
Benešová and the beauty
The Municipal Court in Prague last autumn handed down a suspended two-year sentence and four years of probation to Anna Benešová — the best-known figure to receive clemency from Klaus this week — for having allowed dozens of students who were not paying tuition fees to study at the private university .
Among the students were the Czech beauty pageant queen Taťána Kuchařová, named “Miss World” in 2006, along with the children of university employees, Prague City Council members and other politicians, and the Industrial Property Office (ÚPV), which functions as the state patent and trademark office.
Benešová was also found to have bribed local officials; the court heard, for example, that in January 2008 she gave Kč 50,000 in cash to a clerk whom she hoped could help secure lower rents for the school’s premises, and in 2009 twice that amount to a Prague 3 councilor Pavel Hurd to influence other members to vote in favor of MUP’s petitions to buy property owned by the district.
Apart from using unethical and illegal means to improve MUP’s fortunes, the former director also reconstructed an apartment in Prague and a home in Dobřichovice, south of the Czech capital, with money that should have gone to the university.
In total, Benešová was found to have stolen from the university or otherwise deprived it of income totaling more than Kč 6 million.
