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The Czech footballer Tomáš Ujfaluši has signed a three-year contract with Athletico Madrid. The defender, who is 30, was captain of the Italian side Fiorentina but became a free agent at the end of last season. Ujfaluši also captained the Czech national team at Euro 2008, in the absence of the injured Tomáš Rosický.

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.

Over 80 percent of Czech towns would like to implement more stringent gambling regulations, found a survey commissioned by the Minister for Minorities and Human Rights Džamila Stehlíková. Over 85 percent of towns polled said that the negative effects of gambling - such as crime - cost the municipality more than the profits generated through gambling tax. Minister Stehlíková’s poll comes weeks before a vote on new gambling laws. Deputies are set to discuss whether internet and mobile phone gambling should be outlawed, as well as whether casinos should be banned from opening near schools. According to Finance Ministry data, each adult Czech spends on average 12,900 crowns (852 USD) on gambling each year. There are thought to be around 100,000 gambling addicts in the Czech Republic.

Škoda Auto is to provide the Czech police force with over 2800 new vehicles in a deal worth over 1.32 billion crowns (87 million USD). On Monday, police officials signed a contract with the carmaker; both parties stressed that they were happy the Czech police would be driving a Czech-made car. Škoda is expected to deliver the first 500 vehicles by November this year, with the remaining cars to be delivered before the end of 2011. A police spokesperson said that there was an option in the contract for a further 700 cars to be supplied in the next four years.