News

Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek has said the Finance Ministry will not disclose the details of the settlement with the Japanese bank Nomura concerning the case of the collapsed Czech bank IPB in which Nomura had invested heavily. Mr Topolanek said the reason was a pending arbitration between the Czech state and the CSOB bank which took over Nomura in 2000. The Finance Ministry had announced in March that the agreement would be disclosed at the beginning of April at the latest. Deputy Chairman of the lower house, Lubomir Zaoralek, says the decision by the Finance Ministry not to disclose the agreement is in breach of the law.

The President of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Vaclav Paces, has said the academy may find itself in severe financial difficulties in 2008. Under an earlier 2008 state budget proposal, the academy was supposed to receive one billion crowns less than this year. Under a revised state budget draft, the amount allocated for research in 2008 would be by 80 million crowns lower than in 2007.

The Police Presidium has said Vratislav Gregr is to become the new head of the Czech branch of the Interpol. He is replacing Pavol Mihal who was dismissed earlier this year after it was revealed that he previously worked for the Czechoslovak communist-era secret police, the StB. Vratislav Gregr will resume office in October after he finishes his duties at the Europol headquarters in The Hague. His predecessor Pavol Mihal bypassed a 1991 law barring former secret service agents access to top public posts. He used the name Pavel instead of Pavol when applying for a security clearance.

A special team at the Supreme State Attorney's Office has cast doubt on the so called Kubice report which claimed that organized crime had infiltrated the Czech civil service. The head of the Office for Investigation of Organized Crime Jan Kubice told a parliamentary committee last June that the outgoing Social Democrat prime minister Jiri Paroubek and other top officials had hindered his unit's work in order to shield party colleagues and that criminals had infiltrated the civil service. A special team set up at the Supreme State Attorney's Office to investigate the claims has concluded that these claims were unfrounded. Its spokeswoman Irena Valova said on Tuesday that in none of the cases mentioned was the supervising state attorney contacted by anyone with the intention of influencing the criminal proceedings, nor had there been any attempt to influence the work of the police.