Prague - The Czech political scene has been shaken by a new scandal, repercussions of which may be drastic for all parties involved.
According to reports that have transpired in some Czech media since Thursday evening, Jan Morava, a 29-year-old MP from the Civic Democratic Party (ODS), was trying to blackmail Olga Zubová, a rebel MP from the Green Party, into toeing the line within the three-member coalition led by ODS.
He reportedly meant to use pictures of Zubová's daughter, which he ordered to be made, to make the Green MP believe somebody was controlling her child, thus gaining a lever against Zubová who is known for questioning the coalition's policies.
In today's interview for Aktuálně.cz Morava insisted he never extorted anybody. "I am willing to make everything public to prove it is all nonsense. It is absurd to think I would actually blackmail someone."
As reported by iDNES.cz internet server, Morava hired another person to follow Zubová's daughter Martina and take photographs of her which he could then use to secure the rebellious MP's cooperation. Undercover journalists posing as the private detectives for hire secretly recorded several meetings with Morava.
What follows is the confrontation of two versions of what happened - one, according to Morava, and the other, told by the journalists who set up a trap for him.
Finding an ally
According to MfDnes daily, a sister publication of iDNES.cz, the whole thing started as an idea of reporters at the privately-onwned TV Nova who wanted to uncover the hidden reality behind scandal-prone Czech politics.
They had found an ally in the ODS rebel MP Vlastimil Tlustý, who was all too eager to tell them what dirty tricks he had to put up with, allegedly from his fellow party members.
Tlustý, who has been openly critical of his party leader and Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek, even posed for staged photographs of him and a young woman in a hotel pool and agreed for the bogus private agency to try to peddle to his fellow politicians looking for dirt on their colleagues.
He believed there would be an interest in this material even from his own party, which would help prove his claims about the disastrous situation in the ruling party under current leadership.
Peddling the pictures
The fake detective agency then tried to approach various lobbyists with the pictures, including Topolánek's close aide Marek Dalík, who allegedly showed no interest in them.
However, MP Jan Morava did express interest, and - accordig to the journalists - requested more material that could compromise other lawmakers.
It took TV Nova's investigative reporter Janek Kroupa and his colleagues from MfDnes eight months to finally nail him, they say.
Morava told Aktuálně.cz he was approached by a man last February or March, who introduced himself as Mr. Dvořák. He showed him the photographs of his party colleague Vlastimil Tlustý with an unknown woman.
"I, myself, have not contacted anybody. They were always the ones to contact me. I can prove this through e-mail communication which I have printed out," he says. "I offered them five thousand crowns for the photographs. They gave them to me for free when I promised them I would order more material."
Intending to uncover the matter
Morava says that his intention was to uncover the origins of the photographs and its authors: "I wanted to find out whether they were just bragging [or they were real]."
In order to uncover the authors' identities, Morava says he fabricated a meeting and chose Prague airport for it, because it has a sophisticated CCTV system. At that point, Zubová's daughter Martina entered the frame and Morava became a victim of his own investigation, he says.
"Martina, whom I had befriended earlier, was coming back from abroad and I was supposed to pick her up at the airport. I contracted this Mr. Dvořák to take a picture of me and Martina together as I was escorting her."
This was an attempt, Morava insists, to find out whether Dvořák was telling the truth and was able to provide such photographs.
Forcing the rebel MP back into the fold
MfDnes reporters are convinced Morava wanted to use the photographs of Zubová's daughter to intimidate the MP and force her into toeing the line during voting on the government-sponsored laws.
During the meetings with the "private detectives", Morava is said to have claimed he was tasked by his party to "take care" of the rebelling Green MP. But ODS party leader Topolánek now vehemently denies this.
Kroupa's investigative team has secretly recorded footage of Morava giving the orders to the supposed detectives to take photos of him and Zubová's daughter. He told them the place and the time, hoping the pictures will then help him impress it upon the Green MP that somebody has control over her child and she better behave accordingly.
These photographs had been taken, but Morava never received them. Instead, several days ago, MfDnes says, Kroupa revealed himself to him and told him he had secretly recorded the meetings.
Trying to call the bluff
Morava now says he had thought he called the fake agents' bluff: "I had obviously believed they never went to the airport. But some ten days later they contacted me, saying they had them. And so I went to get them."
In the meantime, another journalist, Tomáš Syrovátka from MfDnes, contacted Morava to find out about the situation in ODS. And Morava brought the photographs with him.
"I had been offered certain material and I myself had notified the media about this, but I was not aware that the same journalists were already playing against me in the same game," Morava told Aktuálně.cz.
Hoping to score political points
The lawmaker then continued in his investigation, hoping to score political points by uncovering the network of people who were peddling sensitive information about prominent people. "I wanted to establish myself politically through this," says the young MP.
He then needed to test journalist Syrovátka. "And that's where I made a terrible mistake, involving the Zubov family again in the matter. And that is a thing I am terribly sorry about," he says, regretfully.
"I said some private things I knew thanks to my friendship with the Zubovs. And that's when I got myself into that insane, absurd situation," he says, his voice shaking.
