Czech Republic left with 350 million dollar bill in wake of TV Nova ruling

The dispute over one of Europe's most successful commercial TV stations appears to be entering its final stages. The Czech government has begun talks with the Bermuda-based Central European Media Enterprises or CME, on how to pay more than 350 million dollars in damages for failing to protect the company's investment in TV Nova. A court of arbitration ruled on Friday that the Czech state had failed CME and its chief investor Ronald Lauder when the country's Broadcasting Council allowed Nova's director Vladimir Zelezny - formerly Mr Lauder's business partner - to wrench the station away from CME in 1999. But not everyone thinks the Czech tax-payer should pick up the bill: among them is commentator Vaclav Pinkava.

Vladimir Zelezny, photo: CTK

"It is not a morally just case to bring against the Czech Republic. If every private foreign investor who doesn't get on with the partner they chose to go into business with was to sue the country in which they operated, that might be an acceptable way of doing things but it would still be questionable in a moral sense, because the Czech tax-payer will be paying this, and it's not the Czech tax-payer who swindled or tricked or conned Mr Lauder and CME out of anything."

But it was the Council for Radio and TV Broadcasting, representing the Czech state I suppose, which gave the nod to Mr Zelezny to wrench Nova away from Ronald Lauder.

"Yes indeed. I think they have a case to bring against the machinery of the state, as represented by the officials in the Broadcasting Council, and therefore by a roundabout route the voter is to blame for having elected the kind of administration that allows these things to happen."

TV Nova, which broke away from Ronald Lauder and CME in 1999, looks like it's emerged as the winner out of all this doesn't it? Mr Zelezny gets to keep his TV station, he doesn't have to pay Mr Lauder a penny, is he out of the woods now?"

"Well let's not forget that he personally is being prosecuted for a number of things [connected to the TV Nova ownership dispute]. He is not out of the woods, and neither does he in a technical sense 'own' the TV station, because he's made it a tactic to extricate himself from any kind of ownership relationship to it. So that should he lose the court cases pending against him, he would not have the means to cough up the sums that he would supposedly have to pay."

This arbitration ruling - good or bad for the Czech business environment?

"I think it's good in the sense that it's good for these things to be experienced by a fledgling democracy, to see the consequences - warts and all - of dodgy business. That it can, in an arbitration dispute, go against you. Even if perhaps for the wrong reasons."