From November 26, completely new and a little more civilized chapters in the history of Czech sport will be written. A major trial plot with Miroslav Pelta and other officials, officials, as well as with two giant sports organizations, the Football Association of the Czech Republic and the Czech Sports Union, is scheduled for this day.

No medals or points will be awarded. The court rules on the guilt or innocence of the defendants or pronounces sentences.

Already this week, Attorney General Ondřej Trčka greatly rekindled public interest in the ongoing process, when he shocked the lay public and surprised the professional public in his closing speech. And the defendants were probably stopped for a moment by the beating of the heart.

It was then that they learned from him how many years the plaintiff would like to send them behind bars and how many millions of crowns they would still have to pay as a fine. Miroslav Pelta heard a combination of 9 years plus 25 million, American and Czech basketball chief Miroslav Jansta 5 years in prison plus 2 million, former deputy minister Simona Kratochvílová 10 years and 6 million. To cite in detail at least the most watched figures of the process. However, even their “colleagues” at the Trčka quay did not spare the number of sentences in his proposal. On the contrary.

Such “rockets” have not yet flown over Czech territory due to the problematic use of public funds. Even the former governor of Central Bohemia David Rath, possibly the biggest convicted corruption sinner in the public sphere, was eventually sentenced to “only” 7 years in prison and the obligation to pay 10 million crowns.

The guilt or innocence of the defendants, as well as the possible amount of the penalties, will of course not be decided by the public prosecutor, but by judge Lenka Cihlářová. We will see if and to what extent he agrees with the plaintiff Trček and his argument on the violation of the law. Let’s also wait patiently for him to take Trček’s view of the draconian “whipped” scale of sentences, or be softer.

It should be added that the case will not end even after November 26 with the verdict of the Prague municipal court. Appeals to the High Court will come with near certainty. However, in a few weeks we will have at least a basic message and a first guide that we can build on more firmly.

Until now, virtually everyone has been fumbling over the issue of state sports subsidies, both in the Black Forest. During the legal process, it became clear how the whole system has been set up by the state in a confused and confused manner for years.

Of course, there was a legal framework for this issue. But in the real world, subsidized fishing was like the struggle of the jungle’s most powerful predators for government and control. And for a simple and compelling reason. The Department of Education created the unwanted jungle with its many years of inability and inconsistency. And to make matters worse, in real-world processes, the sports associations themselves, i.e. directly “beasts” fighting for subsidies, have let the subsidy jungles themselves intervene in the form of of a forest stand.

The extent to which Pelta or Jansta was an act of sports lobbying, or whether they exceeded the law (and to what extent), will be decided by the court. When his verdict crosses the jungle a bit and becomes transparent. In the current tangle of subsidy law, actually combined with some unwritten customary law, and perhaps even the law of the fittest, it’s easy to get lost in an instant.

Certainly, it is true that few defendants have probably met the public prosecutor in the history of justice. However, in the Celtic sports grants affair, the complainant seemed to be talking about a whole different world from the one that came to life in the wharf staff press release.

To some extent, I am willing to Janst et al. believe that they are authentic at least on some points. For example, some people in the sports branch of the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports probably also found it quite normal and normal that union leaders were behind the scenes to check the latest allocation of grants, compare it to their own. preliminary calculations then instruct the department officials to quickly review the calculation.

According to the indictment, this was a gross violation of the law, according to Pelta, Jansta et al. on a normal routine of daily life. The problem is, both parties can be right, because the above statements do not contradict each other. In other words: just because something was done normally does not mean that it was automatically in accordance with the law.

Police did not focus on the sports subsidy issue until 2016 and 2017. I am almost certain that if it was possible to go even deeper into the river of time during the search, the whole courthouse of Spálená Street in Prague might not be enough for more and more defendants where the case is being discussed.

Consider, for example, that a substantial part of sports associations and organizations have for many years provided totally unrealistic data on the number of their members in grant applications. Their registration systems honestly only awarded new members. But when someone stopped running or even died, it often didn’t show up in the “records” of sports associations. The “black souls” stayed there. It wasn’t much of a secret, let alone an audience. But the police never hit on the case and didn’t enforce the letter. And it is undoubtedly in many other cases where the subsidies were enchanted. Sometimes it was even necessary to cast spells, because, for example, the methodology of the ministry associated with the grants was, according to several witnesses, totally inadequate.

Some clerks from the witness stand ministry informed the court that they had no idea how to assess the claims. Sad findings.

What the ministry could not do with honor, logically tried to penetrate the sports world. It has gone absurdly far. And that’s where the whole thing happened. Once heated, the milk should be taken out of the pan.

Pelta, Jansta et al. they may suffer the fate that the police shed light on them using operational techniques. Likewise, their predecessors did perhaps even more hellish things with impunity, and on top of that, they themselves saw their behavior towards non-investment subsidies as a common and established standard. But these arguments are completely strange. The answer to the question of whether their actions violated the law is essential. And Judge Cihlářová will answer him in November.

Not to mention that the whole business is divided into two branches. Until now, these have mainly been non-investment programs for the functioning of trade unions.

However, the public is more familiar with the second branch, in which then-Czech football boss Miroslav Pelta worked on the distribution of investment grants with MP Kratochvílová, in an apartment in Senovážné náměstí, which he owned. made available to him. They met secretly there, and even more secretly, they were intercepted by the police.

Perhaps it is obvious to young children that grant decision-making processes probably shouldn’t look like this. However, Pelta and Kratochvílová said in court that they were not aware of any errors. Strange. At the same time, according to wiretaps, Kratochvílová constantly questioned Pelt about being careless. And she asked him not to say this or that over the phone. Probably for fear that something would be revealed. This is proof that the two knew very well whether one wants the illegality of their activities. Even here, however, the final verdict has to be handed down by the court, so let’s not anticipate it.

However, I will allow myself to make one of my own judgments today. This is Pelt’s latest word pearl: “We have a moral right to acquittal.”

What to say? The most appropriate will perhaps be classical sport: “Certainly …”