Final Word from Tuesday, July 31, 2018

One of the biggest questions in the OKD scandal is who knew what when. According to Lidové noviny, a recording shows that the cabinet knew on March 23, 2004, that the official appraisal of OKD didn't include all of the subsidiaries. The prime minister at the time was Vladimír Špidla, and the vice PM and finance minister was Bohuslav Sobotka. They knew that some assets were not included, yet Sobotka sent a letter to the EU Commission two years later stating repeatedly that the sale took place at the "fair market value." (The letter, whose text was drafted by the law firm of Radek Pokorný, can be found here, without appendices.) When defending against the Commission's question of why the authorities used a "restricted sale" to Karbon Invest, without formally notifying the Commission, Sobotka replied: "A member state is thus free to choose, as it deems appropriate, the procedure through which its shareholdings are sold, as long as the sale occurs at market value." [Czech Republic apartments European Union Vox]