The Czech prosecutor’s office has filed fraud charges against the founder of the Help Ukraine charity organisation, Vladimir Gergel, who is suspected of misappropriating part of the funds allocated by the Czech Ministry of Education. This was reported by Czech Television, according to Komersant ukrainskyi
Prague investigators have completed the investigation and filed a motion to charge one person with the crime of aid fraud. Vladimir Gergel faces up to ten years in prison due to losses of more than thirteen million crowns.
It is noted that the Ministry of Education provided a twenty-million-kronor subvention to the “Help Ukraine” Foundation for the opening of the “Roztila” Community Centre. The foundation promised to serve the integration of Ukrainian children and their parents. According to the terms of the aid, the money was to be used, for example, to teach Czech or provide drinking water for children, and that the child’s participation in the adaptation group was free of charge for parents. However, as ČT Reporters found out, the foundation charged clients for meals and did not pay its employees for the work they did.
The founder of the foundation, Vladimir Gergel, immediately after the foundation received the first ministerial aid of 15 million CZK, transferred 2 million CZK ($89,200) from the foundation’s account to his mother’s account. He then withdrew another CZK 6 million ($267.7 thousand) in cash and paid a total of CZK 8 million ($357 thousand) to buy an apartment in Prague.
According to ČT Reporters, investigators managed to confiscate property and money worth CZK 12 million ($535.5 thousand) as part of the investigation. The Prague City Prosecutor’s Office will now decide on the request for indictment.
The investigation has been ongoing since 2023, and in early August, the prosecutor granted the request for indictment.
There are about 397,000 Ukrainian refugees in the Czech Republic. In January 2023, Prague Mayor Zdeněk Hřib said that since the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion, Prague had received approximately 120,000 Ukrainians, at least a third of whom were children. According to him, the main task of the authorities is to adapt the refugees, including teaching children in local schools.