The presidential campaign headquarters of Milos Zeman is the old Gripen HQ.



A SUPERSONIC view!

Between 1998-2004, the campaign to sell the JAS-39 Gripen supersonic fighter to the Czech Republic, led by BAE Systems, was orchestrated from an office located at Loretánská 13, Hradčany, Praha 1. For the last few months, the same building has been used as the headquarters of Milos Zeman’s presidential campaign.

This is an unhappy coincidence given that relations between Milos Zeman and Gripen go back a long way.

Between 1998-2002, today‘s president-elect, Milos Zeman, was the leader of a minority CSSD government, secured with the support of its sworn ideological enemy, ODS, then led by outgoing president Vaclav Klaus, in a blissfully happy arrangement that came to called, without a hint of irony, "The Opposition Agreement".

Zeman’s premiership was dominated, at least in the realm of defence, by the decision to procure supersonic fighter jets. In May 2001, four of the five bidders to supply the Czech Republic with supersonic fighters, including two US bidders, Boeing and Lockheed Martin, pulled out on the grounds that the process was being rigged in favour of BAE Systems/Saab and their JAS-39 Gripen.

Most of us assumed at the time that such a resounding vote of no-confidence in the selection process would kill the project off for ever. We were wrong. The fact that there was only one bidder now left, far from deterring the government, actually emboldened it. A year later, on 22nd April 2002, the Zeman government approved the purchase of 24 shiny new Gripen fighters.

All that now remained between Richard Hava, the middleman on the deal, and his multimillion dollar success fee, was a vote in parliament on the funding of the acquisition. Without parliamentary approval of a state guaranteed bank loan, the deal would collapse. The pressure on the government –and on BAE Systems- to secure 101 votes in the 200-seat lower house of parliament was intense.

The campaign to persuade Czech MPs to vote in favour of the state guarantee was run from a lovely office overlooking the Petrin orchards. It was masterminded by an Englishman called Steve Mead, the country manager for BAE Systems.

Mead had a large white board on the wall of his office with the name of every member of the lower house of the Czech parliament, colour coded according to their voting intentions. All CSSD MPs were coloured green, of course. But perhaps more surprising, so were many ODS MPs, including their leader. Vaclav Klaus was chairman of the lower house at the time, a position he secured as part of the blissfully happy arrangement mentioned earlier.

One of the more regular visitors to the Gripen campaign HQ on Loretanska Street was Egon Lansky, who served as a deputy prime minister (1998-1999) in Milos Zeman’s government, responsible for coordinating the foreign affairs, interior and defence ministries. Jan Kavan, pictured below, was another deputy prime minister and minister of foreign affairs in the same government. Both gentlemen were enthusiastic supporters of the Gripen –as was Vaclav Klaus.


Jan Kavan and Milos Zeman approve the purchase of 24 shiny new Gripen jets, 22nd April 2002

Allegations that BAE Systems funded bribes paid to Czech politicians in the build-up to the critical parliamentary vote in June 2002 remain unproven in a court of law. This may be because the allegations are unfounded or because BAE Systems settled out of court with the British and US fraud authorities at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars to the firm, thereby removing the need for any further legal action –at least in the two jurisdictions that matter to BAE Systems.

Bribes or no bribes, the Zeman government lost the loan vote by just one vote in June 2002. And the deal to buy 24 new jets collapsed. And two years later, the Czech government decided instead to lease 14 Gripens for 10 years, at which point BAE Systems moved out of Loretánská 13, its mission accomplished.

And who would have imagined at the time, that a decade later, the man who made it all possible would be orchestrating his return to power from the very same building?

Milos Zeman will move out soon as well, his mission too most skilfully accomplished.