Legal reasons for the dismissal of the director of the National Gallery Prague and the Art Museum Olomouc

In recent days, there has been criticism of the ministry in some media regarding 1) the manner of the dismissal of both directors, especially Mr. Docent Jiří Fajt, and a number of disinformation and falsehoods regarding 2) the reasons for the dismissal itself. This document aims to clearly summarize the facts for the professional public and the media that led the ministry to take this step.

1. The administrative framework for dismissing the directors of contributory organizations

The Minister has the right and responsibility to appoint and dismiss individual senior officials and directors of contributory organizations managed by the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, and in some cases, it is also amandatory obligation if it is found that they are not performing their work competently, not fulfilling their work duties, or evenviolating the law or other regulations. If this occurs repeatedly and consistently, and there are justified concerns that similar actions will continue in the future (see Mr. Fajt's statement about the intention to conclude the same contract for 2019 soon), it is thelegal obligation of the minister to act actively and without delay to protect the property and good name of the given institution as well as the entire Czech Republic and to prevent further damage.

1. The dismissal of the Director General of the National Gallery in Prague

The media was informed at the press conference on April 18, 2019, among other things, about a “licensing contract” that former Director General Jiří Fajt secured for himself on December 31, 2018, a reward of CZK 1,120,000 in addition to his salary and other bonuses for the "dramaturgical plan of exhibitions for the year 2018." This contract was only the most serious breach of duty among many of his management errors, which are documented by the public administrative audits that took place at the National Gallery in Prague over the last 4 months (not in 4 days, as Mr. Fajt claims).

What does the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic see as the unlawfulness of Mr. Fajt's actions? According to the results of the aforementioned several-month public administrative audit and the subsequent legal analysis, the Director General was found to have committed the following actions:

1. He drew a reward of CZK 1,120,000 from funds exclusively designated for “the components of celebrations commemorating significant anniversaries of the year 2018 related to Czech statehood.” According to government resolution No. 353 of May 10, 2017, this reward could only be drawnexclusively for 2 projects, namely “First Republic” and the exhibition “1968: With a Human Face.” However, Mr. Fajt stated in the subject of the licensing contract that there were an additional 6 projects that did not relate to the anniversary projects at all (such as Bonjour Monsieur Gaugain, Fr. Kupka, and others), thus exhibitions that were part of the normal exhibition program of the National Gallery in Prague for the year 2018, but not the aforementioned and government-funded project “Anniversary Celebrations.” This means that he could not and should not have included projects in the subject of the licensing contract that were not directly related to the celebrations and thereby unjustly increased the amount of the subject of his own performance under the licensing contract.
2. The contract is concluded on one side by Mr. Jiří Fajt, at that time the Director General of the National Gallery, and on the other side by Ms. Giese, his chancellor. However, according to directive No. 5/2017 of the National Gallery and the signature regulations of July 1, 2018, shehas the authority to sign contractual commitments only up to CZK 500,000 without VAT. Mr. Fajt states on April 17, 2019, that in the case of representing the Director General, he has the same competences as him (meaning Jiří Fajt). However, since the contract ispersonally signed by Director General Fajt and his chancellor Giese, there can be no question of representation. In this respect, the contract may be relatively invalid.
3. Another peculiarity of the contract isthe self-attribution of the authority to award himself a reward and to determine its amount. Such a matter would have to be clearly discussed with the Ministry of Culture, or the relevant department, and recorded, which did not happen. Even if there were indeed oral negotiations between Mr. Fajt and the former Minister of Culture Mr. Herman, as reported in the media, regarding balancing Mr. Fajt's salary to the so-called German level through various contracts for work while Mr. Herman was head of the ministry, this arrangement certainly does not bind other ministers. Therefore, in the event of a change in the leadership of the Ministry of Culture (the appointment of Mr. Šmíd on December 13, 2017, and Mr. Staněk on June 27, 2018, after Mr. Herman), the Director General should have entered into negotiations with the new minister or his deputy regarding his salary adjustments and led a dialogue about possible exceptional forms of remuneration and, if necessary, argue in the manner in which he claimed Mr. Herman had accommodated him, e.g., in the case of the exhibition of Charles IV. However, there was never a dialogue on this topic between the Director General and the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic. If we set aside the immoral, non-transparent, and completely uncollegial nature of this form of remuneration, it is clear that both the amount and the legal title of this remuneration were decided arbitrarily by Mr. Fajt himself, without prior discussion and approval from the ministry.
4. A serious irregularity is the retroactive provision in Article 8.1, as the contract was concluded on December 20, 2018, but took effect "obligatorily" retroactively from September 1, 2017. Thisextremely irregular provision appears suspicious and purposefully in the context of the entire contract. The law assumes that contracts for services are negotiated in advance, not retroactively, as services cannot be stored and utilized from reserves. Therefore, if a service contract is concluded for the entire year 2018, it is expected that it will certainly be discussed and signed before the project begins, i.e., at the latest before the start of the anniversary celebrations in December 2017. And not in the last week of the following year (December 2018), with the stipulation that immediately after signing, the author has the entire performance, i.e., an amount exceeding CZK 1 million, sent to him by the National Gallery on New Year's Eve, December 31, 2018.
5. Equally contentious is the specification of the “author's work” in Article 2.1. It is hardly possible to consider the dramaturgical concept of the National Gallery for 2018 as a comprehensive author's work, especially since several other curators and authors participated in it, which can be documented from public sources. It is rather a collaborative effort of multiple authors, rather than a distinct and unique work of a single author, namely Mr. Fajt. In the position of the Director General, it is further assumed that he will oversee and supervise the approved dramaturgical plan of exhibitions and individual projects, including personal communication with individual artists, as part of his ordinary managerial concept and management agenda, not as a specifically and additionally compensated activity.

We set aside the uncollegiality of the entire high remuneration, which is not a criminal law matter but merely a procedure against good morals, and which is particularly professionally unacceptable for a person in a leading managerial position.

In the context of the above points, it should be added that one of the reasons for the immediate dismissal was also the fact that former Director General Fajt admitted to the inspectors on April 17, 2019 (as he later confirmed again on TV Events Comments on April 18, 2019), that he was planning to conclude a similar contract, with the same amount of remuneration, for the year 2019. In other words, he intended to continue his unauthorized actions consisting primarily of appropriating the authority to decide himself on the amount of authorial remuneration to the base salary of the director without any prior discussion with his founder, the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic.

Finally, it should be noted that former Director General Mr. Fajt manipulatively relies in his defense on a government resolution, which nowhere mentions the possibility of agreeing on extra remuneration or its amount, especially at the expense of his employees and his own institution, whose interests, including economic ones, he was supposed to defend. By awarding himself extra remuneration of CZK 1,120,000, he thus fulfilled all the features of unlawful conduct.

In summarizing all the above-mentioned facts, it is clear thatit was the legal and urgent obligation of the minister to act and to dismiss the former director of the National Gallery, as the materials he received indicated facts suggesting that a crime or another unlawful act was highly likely to have been committed. There were a number of such facts, and their detailed enumeration is contained in the submitted criminal complaint and will be the subject of investigation by the authorities conducting criminal proceedings.

In the case of Mr. Director Fajt, there wereserious suspicions of committing several criminal offenses in the areas of financial management and conflict of interest, particularly the conclusions from the preliminary investigation of the internal control of the Ministry of Culture. All facts and circumstances must now be investigated by the authorities conducting criminal proceedings.

1. The dismissal of the Director of the Museum of Art in Olomouc

In the case of Mr. Director Soukup, it was primarily a fatal failure in the preparation and management of the SEFO project and, in this context, unlawful conduct, which he allegedly committed by ignoring the criticisms and findings of the supervisory bodies of the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic and actively failing to take any remedial action in relation to the termination of the contract with the architectural studio DI5, where substantial damage is threatened through legal proceedings, as well as failing to disclose to the founder the long-term overpriced purchase of individual parcels of land for the future site of the SEFO project.