Final Word from Monday, May 14, 2007
Crackdowns against corruption in the CR sometimes take the form of squeezing one political party out of the action and installing someone from the new elite in the post. When the head of the ŘSD highway dept. loses his job, it probably means nothing will change but the name on the door and the numbers on the offshore accounts. So the new head of ŘSD, Alfred Brunclík, has hired Eltodo to audit the e-toll system, although Eltodo is a supplier to the very e-toll system it's supposed to audit. And now ŘSD plans 11 tenders for road work and has given notice in advance that the contracts are worth Kč 30bn. All the bidders need to do is agree on a price and split the margin. But it isn't true, Brunclík assures us, that road work is more expensive here than elsewhere. He's probably right, if he's comparing it to Argentina, where six Skanska officials were just busted for paying kickbacks.[Czech Republic department construction building electronic tolls]