PRAGUE (Reuters) -The opposition ANO party plans to call a no-confidence vote in the Czech government after the justice minister resigned over accepting a $45-million bitcoin gift for the ministry from an ex-convict, deputy ANO chief Karel Havlicek said on Tuesday.
The minister, Pavel Blazek, a lawyer and veteran senior official in Prime Minister Petr Fiala’s centre-right Civic Democrats party, denied doing anything illegal in his decision to accept the gift – which was part of bitcoin holdings returned to the former convict after he served a jail sentence.
The scandal is a further setback for the government which has been trailing the opposition, led by the populist ANO party, in opinion polls before an election set for October 3-4.
“Unless something absolutely exceptional happens, we will trigger a no-confidence vote,” Havlicek, whose party has enough members of parliament to force a no-confidence motion, said on Czech Television. “There is no other option.”
The donation was 30% of bitcoin holdings of the ex-convict that had been confiscated with hardware and frozen for about decade, while bitcoin value soared.
A court ordered the release of the hardware after the person served his sentence, Czech media reported. It was not clear why the person agreed to the gift and he declined to comment to Czech media.
Fiala said on Tuesday he understood public suspicions that the state may have been abused for legalising criminal income, and that the issue had to be fully investigated.
The person providing the gift was convicted for running an illegal marketplace on the internet and was in jail in 2017-2021 for fraud, drug trade and illegal armament, Czech media reported.
(Reporting by Jan Lopatka)
Comments