Prague’s mayor has named a Czech-American businessman Vladimír Lich as de facto director general of DPP — the Czech capital’s scandal-ridden public transport firm — for a two-year term. Under Lich’s leadership as “crisis manager,” all cases of alleged dodgy deals are to investigated in tandem with a broader review of how DPP has allocated public funds and contracted. Lich worked in global consultancy A.T. Kearney’s Czech office from 1989 until last year.

Managers of the city-owned Prague Transport Company (DDP) — under investigation due to alleged corruption in the awarding of contracts and terms thereof — concluded a remarkably disadvantageous contract in 2006 to buy new LCD televisions via the firm Xanthus, to which acting DPP chief Jaroslav Stůj has links, Czech Position has learned; Stůj has since been recalled from the post by the DPP supervisory board. 

Czech media continue to untangle the web of links between opaque offshore companies, the law firms that represent them, and the individuals benefiting from contracts agreed by Prague transport company (DPP) former CEO Martin Dvořák — possibly including his mother (a police probe is underway). Czech Position has uncovered yet another, involving a security firm whose clients included DPP and TV Prima, which Dvořák once headed.

Martin Dvořák’s last official act before being resigning as CEO of Prague public transport company DPP was to cancel a disadvantageous contract with the paper mill Neograph to produce metro, tram and bus tickets. Czech anti-corruption police are now looking into his family’s finances, after his mother bought a Kč 25 million villa via a lawyer with Šachta & Partners, the firm representing “Prague godfather” Ivo Rittig, a lobbyist who had a lucrative consulting contract on the suspect DPP–Neograph deal.