Czech Republic Has Its Answer to the Beverly Hills Star Tour

WJS: PRAGUE—As the tour bus rolled to a stop across from a modern, concrete-and-glass house here, guide Justin Svoboda told his group: "This one's very interesting."

Not the architecture so much, but the occupant, Czech businessman Roman Janousek, who is mired in an influence-peddling scandal involving the Prague city government. "Feel free to take pictures," Mr. Svoboda said.

he home was the fourth stop on the so-called Prague Crony Safari, an excursion organized by CorruptTour, a small operation that earlier this year started offering sightseeing trips to places associated with alleged dirty dealing. Executives' villas, public hospitals, you name it.

"I'm disgusted by corruption," said Jan Gregor, a 22-year-old college student who went on the tour with his girlfriend one recent Saturday afternoon. It is "a disgrace for the Czech Republic." As for Mr. Janousek's house, he said, "It's the height of bad taste and arrogance."

To legions of foreign tourists who flock to Prague every year, the Czech capital is best known for its wealth of historic medieval and baroque buildings. But for many outraged locals, it has become more famous for political sleaze. Marianske Square, home to City Hall, is often referred to these days as Mafianske Square.

Curious Czechs have snapped up seats on the CorruptTour expeditions, as public tolerance wanes for corruption, something once viewed as an unavoidable fact of political life, but now increasingly being dragged into the light and condemned.

The tours, which started in February, are the brainchild of Petr Sourek, a 37-year-old professional translator specializing in cultural events and art exhibits, who said he came up with the idea last year after reading yet another story about alleged wrongdoing by politicians.

"Corruption is everywhere. So, I thought, let's use it as the raw material for a business," Mr. Sourek said. "It has really captured the Zeitgeist."

Indeed, across Central and Eastern Europe, anger is boiling over among voters appalled at continuing allegations of graft as widespread budget cutting has hit pensions, health care and other government services.

Corruption scandals have caused political upheaval recently in Slovakia, Romania and Croatia, where former Prime Minister Ivo Sanader pleaded not guilty last month to charges of embezzling millions of dollars of state funds.

"People are so frustrated," said Miklos Marschall, deputy managing director of Transparency International, a nonprofit group that fights corruption.

The kind of petty bribery once common in the former Communist Bloc, where citizens often had to pay to grease the wheels of government or get access to goods, has decreased sharply. But it is thriving at "the level where big business meets the state," Mr. Marschall said. "The stakes are much bigger."

CorruptTour seems unlikely to run out of material soon, in a country where the scandals often veer into soap-opera territory.

On Monday, the governor of the Central Bohemia region was arrested in a police sting operation while carrying a box stuffed with seven million Czech koruna, or about $350,000. The official, David Rath, was charged with accepting bribes.

On Wednesday, Mr. Rath stepped down from the governorship but denied wrongdoing, saying in a statement that he thought the box contained wine. "I'm now concerned only with uncovering the truth about what happened and who's behind it," he said.

Then there is the case of Mr. Janousek, the businessman whose modern concrete villa is a stop on the Prague Crony Safari.

Earlier this year, leading daily newspaper Mlada Fronta published transcripts of what it said were secretly recorded phone conversations between Mr. Janousek and the then mayor of Prague, Pavel Bem, and other city officials. In the calls, the men discussed everything from the sale of city assets to who should head the Prague branch of the state health insurer, according to the paper.

Mr. Janousek and Mr. Bem have declined to confirm or deny the transcripts' authenticity. A special committee of the Czech Parliament has been charged with determining the source of the tapes and whether they are genuine. Neither Mr. Janousek nor Mr. Bem has been charged with any wrongdoing in connection with the conversations.

In the transcripts, Mlada Fronta reported, Mr. Bem addressed Mr. Janousek as "you hummingbird" and "my little buddy." For many Czechs, the tapes have been seen as confirmation of the role played by Mr. Janousek, who is referred to widely in local media as the godfather of Prague or by the nickname Voldemort, after the Harry Potter villain.

After the news broke and pressure mounted on Mr. Janousek, police said he crashed his Porsche Cayenne into another car, then ran into its driver as she tried to prevent him from leaving the scene. When another bystander intervened, Mr. Janousek took off on foot. His flight was captured on video and has become a YouTube hit with Czechs.

Police have charged Mr. Janousek with drunken driving and inflicting grievous bodily harm. Police were assigned to guard the hospital room of the woman Mr. Janousek is accused of harming, a member of the city's Vietnamese community, after Vietnamese leaders said they feared she would be attacked in retribution.

Mr. Janousek told reporters who showed up at the scene that he was "under stress," apologized and offered compensation to the woman. Mr. Janousek's lawyer didn't respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Bem, the former mayor, has repeatedly insisted that Mr. Janousek is merely an acquaintance and didn't improperly influence the city. A former deputy chairman of the Civic Democrats, the political party of current Czech Prime Minister Petr Necas, Mr. Bem says he will give up his seat in Parliament if he is found to have broken the law.

At first, "people had trouble believing we could really just fill the bus and head to a place like Mr. Janousek's villa," said Mr. Sourek, the CorruptTour founder, attributing the reluctance to the country's communist history, which has left a legacy of fear about challenging those in power.

These days, the tours, which cost about $10 a head, are often sold out. University political-economy classes have signed up. So have foreigners. CorruptTour is now offering special excursions in English and German. And a Slovak company is interested in working with CorruptTour to start a program in its country, Mr. Sourek said.

There has been some pushback. After an anonymous complaint, Prague authorities turned up to check CorruptTours business-registration documents to see whether the company's papers were in order, Mr. Sourek said. They were, he said. And a hospital featured on one tour has barred the company from entering its grounds, Mr. Sourek said.

Prague's current mayor, Bohuslav Svoboda, a physician who succeeded Mr. Bem in 2010, said he isn't happy with the attention CorruptTour is focusing on City Hall and its projects. "But, if we shut our door to them, we'd only show that nothing is going to change here," Mr. Svoboda said. "I personally look forward to being able to organize tours no longer called CorruptTour, but called Anticorrupt Tour. That is what I wish."

—Leos Rousek contributed to this article.

Write to Gordon Fairclough