Petr Witowski ended up as CEO and Chairman of the Board of the Prague Transport Company (DPP). At an extraordinary meeting today, the company’s supervisory board, which met due to new allegations of corruption from last week, dismissed him. The deputy chairman of the supervisory board of the company, Jakub Jiran (Pirates), told journalists.
Witowski is not charged. The DPP will announce a bankruptcy for the position, for now the largest city company in Prague will be led by the deputy chairman of the board of directors, Ladislav Urbánek. Witowski told ČTK that he learned about the appeal from the media and no one explained the reasons to him. He respects the decision of the supervisory board.
The company will also declare bankruptcy for the position of dismissed member of the board of directors and former head of personnel Jiří Špička, who is facing charges of corruption. Today, the supervisory board dismissed another accused member, Marek Kopřiva, from the five-member board of directors and elected Jiří Pařížek, the company’s economic director, to replace him, so it remains a quorum.
“Unfortunately, I learned about my resignation only from the media. It is the decision of the supervisory board and I respect it. The chairman of the supervisory board (Zdeněk) Hřib did not inform me of the decision in any way and did not explain the reasons for my resignation. I am particularly surprised because The pirates were so vehemently indignant over the undignified communication of Mr. (ex-minister Ivan) Bartoš’s dismissal,” ČTK Witowski wrote. He alluded to the recent departure of Bartoš and the Pirates from the government, when they criticized the way Prime Minister Petr Fiala announced and carried out the recall.
Last Monday, the High Prosecutor’s Office in Prague announced that it had indicted 13 natural and legal persons for bribery offenses related to the performance of public contracts, according to the Seznam Zprávy server, the number of accused has increased to 14. also concerned DPP.
The Supervisory Board, when fully formed, consists of ten representatives of the city and five employees of the company and is responsible, among other things, for the election of the members of the board of directors. Its member Jan Marek resigned last week because of the accusations, so the council currently has 14 members.
Last week, Witowski himself stated that he was not among the accused and saw no reason for his resignation, following calls from the deputy for transport and the chairman of the company’s supervisory board, Zdeňko Hřib (Pirates), to resign. Mayor Bohuslav Svoboda (ODS) then called on the supervisory board to dismiss the two accused members of the board of directors and to launch a selection process for the general director.
According to today’s council resolution, this should be announced in the near future. “The board of directors received a task from the supervisory board to prepare tenders for the two vacancies on the board of directors by the 30th of this month, i.e. the vacant positions of the general director and personnel director,” Jiran said after today’s meeting. He added that the auditions should then be announced on October 31.
The chairman of Prague’s ANO, opposition representative and member of the supervisory board Ondřej Prokop also called on Hřib to resign at the meeting. “I voted for the dismissal of the accused members of the board of directors and director Witowski. Although the director was not accused, he is, together with Zdenek Hřib, responsible for what has been happening in the DPP in recent years. That is why I also called on Mr. Hřib to resign from all positions. And that I will propose the same to the (Prague) council meeting on Thursday. It is impossible for him as the chairman of the supervisory board to pretend that the whole situation in the DPP does not concern him,” said Prokop.
On the contrary, another member of the supervisory board, the chairman of the opposition Prague Sobě and representative of Prague, Adam Scheinherr, did not support Witowski’s dismissal. “(Witowski) ensures the stability of the company for me, on the contrary, he tried to solve all the problematic projects that fell to him from previous managements,” he said. According to him, it was the Prague management’s mistake that the supervisory meeting was called until today, eight days after the police investigation began. “I asked for a summons on Monday, unfortunately it only happened today, so the accused could only be dismissed now,” he added.
Source: www.tyden.cz
