Final Word from Thursday, November 3, 2005
The last few weeks have been rather tough on the CR's image. The World Bank found that the CR is a worse place to do business than Namibia or Botswana, but at least better than France or Italy. Land speculators connected to the agriculture minister were caught stealing the government blind. So were construction companies, some of which had clean Scandinavian-sounding names. It was revealed that the new health minister's live-in girlfriend was going to work for the biggest drug maker. (Which girlfriend, he asked?) A Polish newspaper reported that beancounter PwC was peddling access to Stanislav Gross and other key decision-makers on the Unipetrol sale. Escaped businessman Radovan Krejčíř gave ČSSD the finger and said he would publish his complete bribe book. And the CR became the first OECD member in history to cancel a peer-review session on corruption. What could the justice ministry possibly have feared? [Czech Republic David Rath Zentiva Skanska PricewaterhouseCoopers bribery Pavel Němec]