Pátek 29. března 2024, svátek má Taťána
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Lidovky.cz

Suspicious Prague land-use plans benefited ‘godfathers’

  9:38

Deputy mayor says Prague zoning process must be revised to eliminate the influence of lobbyists

During the era of former mayor Pavel Bém (Civic Democrats, ODS), Prague City Hall endorsed over 200 suspicious changes in the city’s zoning plan catered to selected real estate developers or the influential lobbyists and entrepreneurs known as “godfathers,” the daily Mláda fronta Dnes reported Monday.

“The number of changes that were approved, despite various technical concerns, is truly high. There are dozens of such cases,” deputy mayor Tomáš Hudeček (TOP 09), who is responsible for the city’s development plan in the current coalition government with the ODS, told the daily.

Some zoning changes seem tailored to specific businessmen although expert officials and municipal unions, for example, spoke out against them. The “godfathers” and others snapped up parcels of arable land that after the zoning changes were worth several times the purchase price as they could be built upon, unidentified sources from Prague City Hall said.

In one such case, the daily said, entrepreneur Sebastian Pawlowski gradually bought 300,000 square meters of land in Uhříněves beginning in 2007 for Kč 460 – Kč 2,000 per sqm, paying a total of Kč 400 million. A zoning change in 2010, which has not been finalized, raised the value to Kč 1.2 billion. If given the green light, Pawlowski plans to build thousands of apartments on the site.

One source said a secret list of zoning changes (including illegal ones) that should take effect in 2015 – on the orders of “top politicians” in the magistrate — had been uncovered. “Experts within the municipality did not agree with them, but their superiors always deliberately by hand entered ‘corrections’ and recommended them for approval. There were 250 such proposals,” one source told Mláda fronta Dnes.

Hudeček said that the zoning process in Prague must be done in a completely different way that eliminates the influence of lobbyists. 

Wire taps of conversations between Bém and influential lobbyist Roman Janoušek suggested the entrepreneur wielded enormous influence over the then mayor and was involved in key real estate transactions involving land held by Prague City Hall and decisions concerning its many municipal companies.

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