Old railway rails, switches, and metal poles are no longer sold in secret after Správa železnic ended years of confidential contracting for its high-value scrap metal sales.
The state railway infrastructure manager operates on a budget of roughly 70 miliard korun and had previously sold its metal scrap exclusively to Trojek since 2018, as Seznam Zprávy reported. Those prior four-year agreements were signed under former director Jiří Svoboda before he left his post last year.
Key financial details of the earlier arrangement, including exact pricing, remained hidden from public view under trade secrecy claims. Because the procurement process bypassed standard public contract laws, the organization was not required to publish offers on its internet profile.
Správa železnic launched an open competitive tender over the summer to secure a new buyer for its decommissioned metal assets. The agency evaluated two bids and selected Trojek, which applied this time as part of a consortium with Kovošrot Group.
Nela Friebová, a spokesperson for Správa železnic, told Seznam Zprávy.
Procurement documents published on the organization’s tender profile show the winning consortium will pay 272 tisíc crowns per ton for copper. A competing bidder offered 161 tisíc crowns for the same material, while overall contracts have historically reached hundreds of millions of crowns, totaling 261 million crowns between 2022 and 2025.
Investigative reporting by Seznam Zprávy revealed that Trojek purchased a 20.7-million-crown apartment in November 2021 within the Churchill residential project above Prague’s Main Station. Former director Svoboda had purchased a flat on the exact same floor eight months earlier.
Michal Trojek, director of the purchasing firm, maintained that the acquisition of the company apartment had no connection to railway contracts or to Svoboda.
Trojek told Seznam Zprávy, explaining that he found the listing on a specialized server and bought it through a real estate agency.
Seznam Zprávy also documented that Svoboda acquired his Vinohradsksé apartment through a transaction where an initial 11.2-million-crown purchase price paid by Českomoravská realitní společnost dropped to 6.6 million crowns when resold to Svoboda a month and a half later.
Svoboda has faced criminal prosecution since the summer in connection with a public tender involving the sale of an 11-million-crown debt that Správa železnic held against a bankrupt company. Law enforcement officers seized the equivalent of 80 million crowns in cash during a raid last year investigating potential bribes in transport construction projects, though Svoboda has not been formally charged with manipulating railway infrastructure investments.
