Final Word from Tuesday, June 28, 2005
After waffling for 10 days, Interior Minister František Bublan admitted on F1 radio last night that the police found only Kč 50m in real money at Radovan Krejčíř's house. The rest of the Kč 3bn in confiscated cash was fake, he said. He again got himself into trouble, though, because the seizure of Kč 2.95bn in counterfeit money would be one of the biggest busts in the history of civilization. In 2003, the Czech National Bank found only 10,829 fake bills of all currencies, worth a mere Kč 17.9m. The alleged take at Krejčíř's house was 165 times more than this. Unless of course it was Monopoly money that can't legally be considered counterfeit. If this is the case, as some media have suggested, Bublan is again playing the Czech people for the fool by bragging about seizing it. This is precisely the kind of Gross manipulation that the recent purge at the police should have eliminated. [Czech Republic Frekvence jedna Stanislav Gross counterfeiting]