News

Czech Prime Minister Jiri Paroubek and Finance Minister Bohumil Sobotka are in disagreement over how to proceed with a controversial arbitration case that could cost the state 40 billion crowns (over 1.5 billion US dollars). A London court is currently handling a complaint against the Czech Republic filed by the Japanese investment bank, Nomura. Nomura claims that the Czech government failed to protect its investment when it ordered the enforced administration of the ailing IPB bank, in which Nomura had shares, and its subsequent sale to a rival Czech banking institution, CSOB five years ago. Nomura is demanding 40 billion Czech crowns in compensation.

From information received by the Czech intelligence services, Prime Minister Paroubek fears the state could lose the case and would like it to try to come to an agreement with Nomura. Mr Sobotka believes that any such agreement would violate state guarantees promised to CSOB in 2000.

The Prague Symphony Orchestra has announced it will have a new chief conductor next season. Jiri Kout is currently Chief Conductor of the St. Gallen Symphony Orchestra in Switzerland. The 67 year-old artist left Czechoslovakia in the 1970s and built a career staging operas in German theatre halls. Mr Kout began performing regularly in the Czech Republic in the mid-1990s, with one of his most recent Bedrich Smetana's My Country at last year's Prague Spring international music festival.

Prime Minister Jiri Paroubek has denied that a change of leadership within the Communist Party is to open the way for a coalition with the Social Democrats after next year's general elections. Mr. Paroubek told journalists that if his party should win the elections then he would favour either a coalition with the Christian Democrats, a grand coalition or a minority government. The Prime Minister said that the Communist Party would have to change more than its leader in order to open the way for closer cooperation.

A new court ruling has once again reversed the decision on the ownership of Opocno Chateau in Eastern Bohemia. According to the Rychnov district court the chateau belongs to the National Heritage Institute, thereby the state. Two earlier court rulings returned the chateau to the last private owners, the Colorado-Mansfeld family, but the Constitutional Court abolished both verdicts in January, bringing the restitution suit back to square one. The property was confiscated on the grounds of the post war Benes decrees and the Colorado Mansfeld family has battled since 1995 to get it back. The case hinges on whether the former owner Collorado Mansfeld was a Czechoslovak citizen and whether he collaborated with the Nazis.