<p>Prague filed a lawsuit against the fine of 11 million crowns from the ÚOHS</p>

Brno - Prague has filed a lawsuit against the fine of 11 million crowns it received in March from the Office for the Protection of Competition (ÚOHS) for the construction of the Troja Bridge connected to the Blanka Tunnel. The case will be handled by the Regional Court in Brno, court spokeswoman Simona Pešková informed ČTK. In similar cases, the court decides in about a year. The fine is one of the highest that ÚOHS has ever imposed for a violation concerning one of the contracts.

According to the office, Prague expanded the original contract to include construction work involving the realization of the new Troja Bridge, and this was done without the use of any type of procurement procedure required by law.

This excluded competition among companies. The chairman of the antimonopoly office, Petr Rafaj, said in March regarding the decision that a completely different bridge was built, which did not match the original design either visually or in terms of cost. The original price was supposed to be around 500 million crowns; the new one cost nearly a billion more.

The city council, under the leadership of Tomáš Hudeček (now an independent, in the TOP 09 club), already claimed that the company Metrostav was building a different bridge than the one originally designed. Therefore, it could not reimburse the invoices. For this reason, the city also initiated arbitration. The arbitration court ruled that Prague must pay the amount requested by Metrostav.

The Regional Court in Brno, to which the city files the lawsuit, can annul the decision of ÚOHS or reduce the fine. The city has until May 16 to file the lawsuit or pay the fine unless the court decides that filing the lawsuit has a suspensive effect on the payment.

The Blanka Tunnel, for which construction was commissioned by the political leadership under Mayor Pavel Bém (ODS), was originally supposed to be put into operation in 2011. The project has become more expensive by at least six billion crowns. The arbitration court has already dealt with disputes between Prague and the construction company Metrostav involving amounts in the billions of crowns.