Karel Vaniš

Foto: ČTK

Moreover, the footage included members of the unit entering the home of a customer who had hidden and committed suicide upon their arrival and images of the customer’s wife upon the discovery of her husband’s dead body in the basement of their apartment building. The videos were procured by Jan Rytíř, a lawyer who is representing 160 people accused by ČEZ of electricity theft. Rytíř said the police provided him with the video footage and gave him permission to distribute it to the media. The team, until recently led by Karel Vaniš, belongs to the department Non-Technical Losses (NTZ) of ČEZ Měření, a daughter company of the electricity group.

The revelation of the practices used by ČEZ has caused public outcry and comes at a time of growing public hostility toward the company for charging some of the highest electricity prices in the EU and numerous reports of dubious connections between the company’s top managers and leading politicians, most notably Mirek Topolánek, the chairman of the Civic Democrats (ODS).  The face of ČEZ’s managing director, Martin Roman, became familiar to the wider public after paparazzi photographed him together with Topolánek last summer on a luxury motor yacht in the Mediterranean.

ČEZ reacted swiftly, organizing a press conference at which Roman defended the existence and practices of the NTZ “commandos,” as they were quickly labeled by the press, saying that NTZ technicians regularly encounter violent electricity thieves, citing marijuana growers and cases of people wielding shotguns as an example. Roman also claimed that the NTZ had uncovered electricity theft worth over Kč 500 million (€19.1 million) since it was formed in 2005. Minister of Interior Martin Pecina came to the defense of ČEZ, saying the NTZ don’t always meet “nice folk.” 

Rytíř told daily Hospodářské noviny (HN) that none of his 160 clients had attacked NTZ technicians, and in the event of physical threat, NTZ employees “should withdraw and call in the police.”   

Roman did admit “excesses” in the past but claimed that the NTZ commandos had changed their tactics and that now they are always accompanied by police upon visits to suspected electricity thieves, a claim which Rytíř rebutted saying that several of his clients had been subject to unacceptable aggressive behavior by the NTZ in 1999. “Among my clients there is not a single case when the NTZ came with the police. To the contrary, in two or three cases my clients called the police themselves. In one case, the NTZ employees actually ran away and the police had to chase after them,” Rytíř told HN.

Nevertheless, faced with the public outrage and after being called to account by Prime Minister Jan Fischer, ČEZ boss Roman was pushed to demonstrate that he is addressing the issue and suspended the NTZ chief Vaniš.

The Czech Police’s Department for the Investigation of Organized Crime (ÚOOZ) has conducted an investigation into the actions of the NTZ over the past three years, during which it has reportedly documented more than 50 cases of the division’s employees entering peoples’ homes without permission and “applying unnecessary psychological pressure.”   

ÚOOZ spokesman Pavel Hanták told sever Aktualne.cz that the department is in the final stages of preparing a list of NTZ employees they suspect of committing crimes against property and privacy, which it will soon hand to the public prosecutor. The crimes for which the police will recommend prosecution carry a sentence of up to 12 years imprisonment.