Members of the Government

10. 7. 201315:05

Mgr. Marie Benešová

Justice Minister

Personal information

Marie Benešová was born on 17 April 1948 in the family of a technical civil servant. Both parents worked in the construction industry. She is married, her husband is a retired doctor, she has one adult son who is a lawyer.

Education

After completing nine-year primary school, she attended a general high school, graduating in June 1966 with a leaving exam. After this, she passed acceptance exams to the Faculty of Law of Charles University in Prague, and began studying there. She graduated from the FL of CU in 1971.

Professional and public activity

From 1971 onward, she worked at the district attorney’s office in Kladno as a legal intern. After almost two years, she successfully passed the judicial exam and was named public prosecutor and assigned to the district attorney’s office in Kladno. She worked there until 1991, having worked in various areas from general criminal cases to a specialization in transport-related criminal offences.

V roce 1991 byla pozvána novým vedením Generální prokuratury ČR na odbornou stáž, neboť řada prokurátorů GP ČR musela své posty po roce 1989 opustit v souvislosti s jejich minulostí a GP ČR sháněla zejména nestraníky s potřebnou praxí. Oba tyto požadavky Marie Benešová splňovala, neboť nikdy nevstoupila do KSČM a měla dvacetiletou praxi. Po absolvování přijala místo prokurátorky GP ČR se specializací na trestné činy mládeže a trestné činy namířené proti dětem a mládeži. Na GP ČR v této pozici pracovala až do zániku prokuratury v roce 1993 a její transformace do státního zastupitelství. Po vzniku Vrchního státního zastupitelství v Praze, byla zařazena do tohoto nově vzniklého článku soustavy státního zastupitelství a zde pracovala ve funkci vedoucí oddělení obecné kriminality do roku 1995.

In 1991, she was invited by the new head of the General Prosecutor’s Office of the Czech Republic for a professional internship, as a number of prosecutors of the GPO of the CR had to leave their posts due to their past, and the GPO of the CR was primarily looking for non-party members with the required experience. Marie Benešová met both of these requirements, as she had never been a member of the Communist Party and had twenty years of experience. After finishing the internship she accepted the position of a prosecutor at the GPO of the CR specializing in young offenders and offences against children and minors. She worked at the GPO of the CR in this position until the GPO was dissolved in 1993 and was replaced by the state attorney’s office. After the creation of the Supreme State Attorney’s Office in Prague, she was assigned to this newly created link in the system of state attorney’s offices, where she worked as head of the general criminal offences department until 1995.

In 1996 she resigned from her position and opened a law practice in Kladno, where she worked until 1998.

From January 1999 until September 2005, she was Supreme State Attorney in Brno.

After being dismissed from this position, Marie Benešová returned to law practice, initially as a barrister for the Císař Češka Smutný law office in Prague. Later with some colleagues she founded Benešová Beránek Blaha, where she currently works.

Marie Benešová only began to involve herself in politics after she left the position of Supreme State Attorney in 2005. Until that time, she was not a member of any political party. In 2006, she joined the Social Democrats (ČSSD). From March 2011 until March 2013, she was deputy party leader of ČSSD, an unpaid function. Up until April 2013, she was also an expert spokesperson of the ČSSD shadow cabinet for the fight against corruption.