ČSSD Senator recommended millions for ‘Czech’ health centre in Zambia in spite of inspectors misgivings
Doctor Stanislav Kusý received tens of millions from the Ministry of Health as development aid for Zambia in spite of the fact that Ministry inspectors strongly advised against it.
Decisions over the portioning of the funds were shared with close friend of Stanislav Kusý, then Deputy Minister of Health Vladimír Dryml. Today Dryml is a Senator. And doctor Kusý works as his assistant.
The development aid began to flow in the year 2000. Kusý’s company Czech Aid was supposed to build a health centre in Zambia. After three years however it turned out that the money had ended up in other companies owned by Kusý and the Ministry of Health stopped financing the project.
At the end of 2005 however Vladimír Dryml started working for the Ministry as an assistant. He himself now confesses that it was as a result of his intervention that the money for his friend Kusý’s African project started to flow again. Yet the leadership of the Ministry of Health at the time didn’t seem to notice a problem. Head of the department was then David Rath, who today distances himself from the project.
‘I told him: David, you’re not allowed to do that because it’s a violation of your political mandate. And that is money with which the Ministry should have nothing to do with,’ says Dryml.
And so financing of Stanislav Kusý’s state enterprise continued until 2006 when it was finally cut off by Ministry administrator Julínka. ‘We were more inclined to act, as doubts about the project had already come to light in 2003. The restrictions were made out on the basis that something wasn’t right, and that the budgetary guidelines had been broken. And maybe even the law,’ said Deputy Minister of Health Marek Šnajdr.
MF Dnes has obtained a complete audit of all of doctor Kusý’s ministry projects. The audit shows that there isn’t even a single year where everything was in order. ‘The financial grants that were provided weren’t used for the purposes which the submitted documents presented as the aims of the project. The internal audit shows the whole operations to be an inappropriate, ineffective and uneconomic drain on government resources,’ states the audit in it’s closing statement.
‘We’ve never seen this report, never read it, and none of us are familiar with it. It’s absurd how confused this situation has become,’ reacted Libor Šlauf , legal advocate for Stanislav Kusý to the report. Stanislav Kusý himself refused to comment. The state-funded Health Clinic is currently up for sale. The money will therefore end up in the Zambian publicly listed company Czech Aid Ltd in which Kusý is involved. Kusý’s lawyer didn’t want to disclose information about who the actual owner of this company is. Apparently he doesn’t know.
