Audit into deputy PM’s finances complete

The American private detective agency Kroll has finished auditing Deputy Prime Minister Jiří Čunek’s finances, Hospodářské noviny reported on Monday. The audit is now in the hands of Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg, who commissioned and paid for the investigation. Mr Schwarzenberg has said that he will discuss the audit’s findings with Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek and Jiří Čunek himself in ten days time, after he has returned from an official visit to the Caucuses.

The leader of the Christian Democrats, Jiří Čunek, was forced to resign from his government posts last November, in connection with corruption allegations. The investigation into whether he accepted bribes was subsequently dropped, and Mr Čunek was able to return to the government. But coalition partners, the Greens, were not fully satisfied that Mr Čunek had cleared his name, and thus Green Party MP Karel Schwarzenberg paid for a private investigation into the corruption allegations.