Final Word from Monday, July 23, 2012

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Lost in all the commotion about the frigging brain surgeon who, in Miroslav Kalousek's words, couldn't possibly have put pressure on Army Chief of Staff Vlastimil Picek about the CASA planes is the fact that Kalousek hired Martin Barták as his deputy finance minister on Aug. 16, 2010. That's right, Barták worked for Kalousek directly for seven months, until the Tatra corruption scandal ran Barták out of office in March 2011. (He had been on unpaid leave since mid-Nov.) What makes this so interesting now is that Kalousek hired Barták to be in charge of auditing EU funding and combatting money laundering. And of course not long after Barták left the finance ministry, the use and abuse of European subsidies became one of the biggest issues in the CR's relations with Brussels. This is another piece in the puzzle of why Kalousek is so nervous about the prosecution of Vlasta Parkanová.[Czech Republic subsidy subsidies European Union]