Final Word from Tuesday, December 5, 2023

There are rumors in business circles, as we wrote on Oct. 16, that the bribe for buying Net4Gas was up to Kč 8bn. That's roughly the amount now being talked about for energy subsidies for large industrial companies next year. The acquisitions of Net4Gas and RWE Gas Storage CZ are being funneled through ČEPS electricity-grid company, which is the one that would have to make the accounting arrangements for any black money. Industry Min. Jozef Síkela (STAN) spoke on Czech TV on Oct. 1 (at 12:55) about shifting from a "price cap" to an "income cap" for natural-gas transit and requiring consumers to compensate ČEPS, as the new operator, for the drop in fees from Gazprom. MP Václav Král of ODS explained that consumers will now pay 75% of the network-maintenance costs based on a new allocation key, instead of 27%. This change has never been explained by the ERÚ regulator, Král said. Yet if someone needed to hide a bribe, he couldn't exactly be entirely transparent about it, could he? [ Czech Republic OVM Television ]