Final Word from Thursday, November 13, 2003
Harry Bosch, the homicide detective in Michael Connelly's novels, says there's no such thing as a coincidence when it comes to the events surrounding a murder. The same could be said of Czech politics. The negative report about CzechInvest on Tues. appeared just as Parliament was debating the industry ministry's funding. CzechInvest will be distributing certain EU subsidies, which makes it an attractive target for politicians wanting to extend their power base. CzechInvest and its CEO, Martin Jahn, are victims of their own success. The better they do, the more others want to bring them down. Jahn broke no laws and apparently didn't benefit very much from CzechInvest's link to professional-service firms. But he should have seen the attack coming and done everything to make sure he was squeaky clean, so that coincidences couldn't happen.