Scandal-hit Czech Minister of Justice Pavel Blazek faces more pressure to quit after he spent an evening at a Prague restaurant with Martin Nejedly, a former aide of populist ex-president Milos Zeman who is being investigated by the police.

Blazek was documented by investigative reporters from online news outlet Seznam Zpravy (SZ) to have spent five hours at a table with Nejedly at a Greek restaurant on August 16.

“You won’t believe it, but I live just around a corner,” Blazek answered to SZ reporters’ questions about the nature of his meeting. In a response which later went viral, Blazek said, “there was a great storm outside, I live just around a corner, and here we met. That’s it. … We still have things to discuss.”  

Blazek tweeted a day later that “it was impossible to leave the restaurant” due to an ongoing storm.

Nejedly is a former representative of Russian oil giant Lukoil, which is still involved in supplying the country with Russian crude, and while working for Zeman, Nejedly openly maintained access to high officials inside the Kremlin. Zeman used to defend Russian dictator Vladimir Putin until his invasion of Ukraine. Czech counterintelligence (BIS) referred to Nejedly as a security risk.    

Blazek‘s meeting took place at a time when police and secret service are investigating how Zeman's entourage managed the budget of the presidential office, as well as possible leaks of classified information to Nejedlý. 

The meeting was condemned by all coalition partners.  "Even if the sky were falling on my head, I would not sit down with a person like Mr Nejedlý," Interior Minister Vít Rakušan (STAN party) told Czech media.

Political commentator Jiri Pehe told bne IntelliNews that Blazek's unbelievable excuse for the five-hour meeting was "a spit in the face of the public".

"The public thinks they are just laughing at us," he said.

The justice minister has long been the subject of controversy for his requests for information on probes into corruption at Brno city hall  in which several of his party and law firm colleagues are under investigation.

More than half of Czechs think he is a threat to the judiciary, according to a poll published last month. Members of the coalition's smallest party, the Pirate party, have also called for him to resign.

Civic organisation Million Moments for Democracy is organising a rally against Blazek on Wednesday, August 23 at Prague’s Klarov, just a street away from the seat of the government.

“Prime Minister Fiala promised a change of political culture ahead of the elections [in 2021], and it is hard to imagine a better proof than firing the minister for his conflicts of interest and ties to questionable businessmen with contacts in Putin’s Russia,” read the leaflets calling for the rally.   

Million Moments for Democracy called the mass protests against former Prime Minister Andrej Babis and his 2019 appointment of Marie Benesova at the helm of the Ministry of Justice. Some analysts observed that the NGO is reluctant to be critical of Blazek’s own controversies out of fear that such criticism could play into Babis’ hands.   

Prime Minister Petr Fiala, Blazek’s close party ally and chairman of the neoliberal ODS, held a meeting with Blazek last week, communicating to him that “he does not consider this type of meeting as appropriate regardless that this has occurred incidentally”,  government spokesperson Vaclav Smolka explained to SZ in a written statement.

Fiala is from the Brno party branch and has long defended Blazek, who was an important party ally in securing support for Fiala’s party leadership bid when Fiala, a former university professor in political science, was less well known country-wide.