Final Word from Wednesday, May 17, 2023

Newly elected Pres. Jan Rafaj of the Confederation of Industry often appeared in the media as a VP of the trade group but was rarely identified by his company's name. That's partly because of a general policy of Czech media, and esp. of public media, to cover over the possible conflicts of interest of people influencing public policy. In Rafaj's case, it's also because much of his professional career has been linked in one form or another to OKD and the 43,000 apartments that PM Bohuslav Sobotka and his legal advisers gave to "good" oligarch Zdeněk Bakala. The old OKD apartments are now owned by Heimstaden Czech, of which Rafaj is the GM. He speaks knowledgably about industry on television, and he'll be assisted at the Confederation by such leading industrialists as Daniel Beneš of ČEZ and Martin Jahn of Škoda Auto, but it's nevertheless highly symbolic that a person whose career is linked to the organized devastation of the coking-coal sector is now the chief voice of Czech industry. [ Czech Republic byty flats coal mining vice president ]