Prosecuting Alena Vitaskova of ERU is so much easier than going after the original owners of solar plants acquired by CEZ in 2009/10.


Alena (far left) with her coven at ERU.

Alena Vitaskova was formally charged with fraud by the public prosecutor last week.

Appointed as the head of ERU in mid-2011, Vitaskova today stands accused of having wilfully undermined efforts in 2012 to strip two solar power plants in Chomutov of licenses obtained fraudulently with the support of ERU officials just before the 31st December 2010 deadline. The sums of money involved are huge. As the prosecutor has pointed out, the fraud would have cost the state almost 2 billion crowns over 20 years if it had not been detected.

Given the serious threat that ERU under the leadership of Vitaskova poses to the profits of electricity distributors and to solar investors both legitimate and bent, I assume that the prosecutor is under great pressure to go after her. And recent observation of public prosecutors at work reinforces the suspicion that they are not immune to such pressures.

For example, isn’t Prague’s former top prosecutor, Vlastimil Rampula, now representing Ivo Rittig, the very man he and his colleague Libor Grygarek were investigating so unsuccessfully on behalf of the public until last year, when they resigned their posts? And isn't Rittig himself an hidden investor in solar power plants?

In my opinion, the move against Vitaskova is best explained by the need to deflect attention from the part played by CEZ in the solar boom.

CEZ acquired some 200 MW of output at a cost of around 10 billion Kc before the December 2010 deadline, in some cases from firms with hidden owners. CEZ has 13 solar power plants today, including the two biggest in the country, Ralsko and Sevetin, both of which were commissioned just before the deadline.

Before applauding the prosecutor's indictment of Vitaskova, ask yourself why CEZ's gigantic projects were able to secure the necessary licenses in time and without resort to the fraudulent tricks of which Vitaskova and ten others now stand accused in connection with the two, much smaller solar plants in Chomutov.

Ask yourself why a state-owned firm was allowed to aggravate the solar problem in this way, and why its chief executive actively opposed efforts by the distibution companies, including CEZ's own, to slow down the growth in photovoltaic plants. Were the private interests of CEZ’s top management under Martin Roman put before the interests of the institution as a whole, and before that part of the institution distributing electricity?

Here is one concrete example. In early March 2010, as the lower house prepared to vote on three amendments to the law on renewable energy source support, the country’s three distributors, CEZ, E.ON and PRE, published a letter sent to members of the lower house in which they urged lawmakers to support changes to the law.

But the letter did not specify which of the three amendments before the chamber MPs should support –and it made a big difference. The government amendment set out to lower the subsidy burden whereas the other two amendments, both initiated by MPs, would have exacerbated the burden.

It is worth reminding ourselves of the background to the letter. The three distributors were alarmed at the size of the problem and were keen to moderate the impending boom. The government shared their concern.

The original version of the letter urged parliamentarians specifically to support the government amendment in third reading. The final version urged them merely to support amendment. And it was CEZ's Roman that insisted upon the removal of the offending word ‘government’, thereby rendering the letter quite useless as a guide on how to vote.

I assume that Roman acted under pressure from politicians and businessmen who had invested in solar –presumably the very same people who were behind the parliamentary initiatives put forward by ODS MPs Oldrich Vojir and Ondrej Plasil. Vojir is best known for making 14 million Kc from the sale of his shares in CEZ in 2005. (see here)

If you need a scapegoat, these two gentlemen would serve your purpose better than Alena Vitaskova. But if you want to find the real winners in the solar business, you need to know the names of the beneficial owners of the firms that actually sold power plants to CEZ in 2009/10.

And this is impossible without criminal charges being laid -and I do not mean against Alena Vitaskova.

Plasil and Vojir will not tell you who persuaded them to put forward their amendments. And Roman will never tell you who leaned on him to remove the word 'vládní' from the letter sent to parliament by distributors. I suppose there must have been dozens of politicians who wanted their investment in a greener future protected.

Above all, CEZ's top management will not tell you who it really shared all those billions with in 2010, even though it was appointed by a government that professed to be desperate to find the culprits.

Until we know who owned the plants bought by CEZ at prices way above the market, how do we know that CEZ was not defrauded by its own management in cahoots with the very politicians who appointed the energy regulator, approved the subsidy scheme, dominated the parliament and apparently themselves invested secretly in solar power plants later sold on to CEZ? Was there ever any doubt that CEZ's projects would be licensed in time? Of course there was not. These people are not risk takers. They are spongers who soak up subsidies by abusing the rules of the game.

There must be at least 250 people in this country who know the identity of the true owners of these assets acquired by CEZ. Will none of them speak out?

Vitaskova shoots from the hip. She is abrasive and badly informed. Many of her troubles she has brought upon herself. But it is essential to remember that she is also a threat to the status quo, including a threat to that part of the status quo involved in an organized criminal effort to defraud the state.

I could be wrong. Perhaps her true purpose is to destroy the credibility of ERU in order to create space for organized crime in the energy sector. And perhaps the public prosecutor is the only hope of stopping her. Perhaps Radek Mezlik is as isolated and overwhelmed as she herself appears to be.

But what if Mezlik fails to secure Vitaskova’s conviction? Shall she then be garroted and burned to death?

Burning a witch is the oldest trick in the book. It is an elegant solution for those who hijacked so much of the solar bonanza for themselves. The frenzy around Vitaskova shifts attention away from them and onto the wicked witch herself.