Final Word from Tuesday, June 15, 2010
HN published a list yesterday of 10 scandals the coalition needs to address for cleaning up the relationship between politics and business, but missing from the list was the biggest one of them all. Who owns Appian/Škoda, the secretive company that gets tens of billions of crowns in business from ČEZ, Czech Railways and DP Praha? Is one of the owners Martin Roman of ČEZ? By dint of their past or current positions, the following leading politicians and businessmen should know the answer: Miroslav Kalousek, Bohuslav Sobotka, Ivan Fuksa, Milan Urban, Petr Bendl, Martin Kocourek, David Vodrážka, Pavel Bém, Daniel Beneš, Petr Žaluda, Miroslav Dvořák, Martin Dvořák and, of course, Martin Roman himself. Either they do not know and are criminally incompetent, or they do know and could be criminally liable for what might well be the CR's biggest case of conflict of interest and shareholder fraud.[Czech Republic České dráhy Dopravní podnik Prague Airport]
Glossary of difficult words
A-Team - The Appian Team; also a reference to the silly American TV show of the same name;
by dint of - by force of, by the strength of;
list of names - all those named are or were connected in their official capacities to one or more of the three named companies; dozens of other people from ministries and company boards could also be included, but these are some of the most prominent ones;
shareholder fraud - deliberately misleading shareholders or concealing information from them that should be disclosed;
might/may well be - very probably is.