ZPMV is the health insurance company Zdravotní pojišťovna ministerstva vnitra. According to Minister of Health Adam Vojtěch and the Ministry of Finance, its finances were the subject of an audit [1]. According to published information, the insurer ran at a loss for several years in a row [1].
Management bonuses
Odměny vedení
Over the past three years, the insurer's executive director Otakar Smolík is said to have received, in addition to an annual salary of about 2.4 million crowns, extraordinary bonuses and severance payments totalling more than 35 million crowns [1]. In 2024 the insurer paid him eight million crowns as a leaving payment because his position was abolished, although he continued in the company in another post [1]. In 2026 ZPMV paid him, according to the findings, more than 17 million crowns [1]. The multi-million bonuses were approved by the then director-general of the insurer, David Kostka, who left the post after eleven years [1]. Smolík left the insurer in 2026 [1].
Between 2024 and 2025, high leaving payments from ZPMV were also received by a former head of a section of the director-general's office, in the amount of 9.3 million crowns, and a former adviser to the director of the performance section, in the amount of about 6.1 million crowns [1].
Reaction of the ministry and investigation
Reakce ministerstva a prověřování
The police are examining the payment of the bonuses [1]. Minister of Health Adam Vojtěch wrote on the social network X that if the unjustified payment of multi-million sums of public money at a time of the insurer's financial difficulties is confirmed, it is in his words a “totally scandalous and inexcusable failure” [1]. He added that the Ministry of Health is “ready to file a criminal complaint so that responsibility is established for everyone who took part in this conduct” [1]. According to Vojtěch, it is necessary to examine whether a criminal offence was committed, for example breach of duty in the management of another's property, and he mentioned not only the leaving payments but also non-compete clauses and bonuses [1]. He also said that the bonuses in the management of ZPMV were higher than at the General Health Insurance Company of the Czech Republic, which, he said, has five times as many insured persons [1].
Lawyer Ondřej Preuss said of the leaving payment made to Smolík that if an employee takes up work with the same employer again, the entitlement to the payment should lapse, adding that it depends on whether it was a leaving payment or severance pay [1].
Chronology
- — Former ZPMV manager Smolík received, in addition to his salary, bonuses and a leaving payment totalling 35 million crowns over the past three years. → iROZHLAS Blesk.cz
Sources
- Blesk.cz (ČTK) — 8 October 2026