Did Czech prime minister Petr Fiala draw 100 million Czech Crowns in subsidies through his non-government organization Centrum Pro Studium Demokracie a Kultury (Center for Studying Democracy and Culture)? No, that's not true: Petr Fiala is one of the founders. Since 2004, when he was appointed Rector of Masaryk University, Petr Fiala has not been involved in specific CDK projects, but only as one of the founders and an expert guarantor on its Board of Directors. He does not receive any salary, compensation or other benefits.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here) on TikTok where it was published by @raond78 on April 24, 2023. It opened:
Fiala subsidied almost a hundred million Crowns through his NGO
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Thu Jun 22 15:46:54 2023 UTC)
The claim first appeared on Czech disinformation websites parlamentnilisty.cz and mix24.cz in September 2021 and was later shared by former prime minister Andrej Babiš (ANO).
Neither Parlamentní Listy nor the other authors of the article have proven in any way that Petr Fiala benefited financially or had a conflict of interest from his work with the organization.
As per their website, CDK's main goal is to contribute to the development of democratic political culture in the Czech Republic. They focus on research on issues related to the functioning of the Czech Republic within European structures and on the study of current processes of the development of the European Union.
The NGO received around 96 million Czech Crowns in subsidies between the years 2000 and 2021 when the claim first appeared.
There was criticism of the subsidies, particularly those relating to Burma. Between 2011 and 2017, CDK helped implement a large-scale project to help Burma, among other things. The project was funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as well as US governmental and non-governmental organizations. CDK was selected to participate in the project in a public tender, among other reasons because it already had many years of experience in running a similar project in eastern Ukraine. The cost of the project from the Czech side was between 1.5 and 2 million Czech Crowns. The vast majority of these funds ended up directly in Burma. The entire project was thoroughly inspected four times and found to be flawless in all aspects.
Petr Fiala was elected Rector of Masaryk University in the years 2004 - 2011. Since 2013 he has been a member of the Parliament of the Czech Republic. In October 2021, the SPOLU coalition (ODS, KDU-ČSL, TOP-09) won the parliamentary elections with 27.8% (1 493 905 votes).
