Corruption report 2007

Jiří Čunek made the headlines for his double appearance in the U.S. State Dept.'s 2007 Report on Human Rights Practices, but there are juicier tidbits than this in the document's pages. Most revealing is the near-verbatim repetition of a line from the 2006 report stating that "political pressure and ineffective police investigative tools contributed to the lack of prosecutions of high-level corruption cases." In other words, the Czech government changed last year from a ČSSD-led coalition to an ODS-led version, but the rules of the game stayed the same. The new government, it seems, made it even easier for corrupt officials by disbanding "the well-regarded financial police as part of Minister Langer's police-reform efforts." How nice it would be if the 2008 report could state that "PM Mirek Topolánek identified corruption as a major problem and made significant progress toward eradicating it." [Czech Republic department prime minister Ivan United States of America]