The Czech Republic’s reputation has been tarnished by the judiciary branch’s failure to cooperate with the Swiss investigation into the massive asset-stripping of mining group MUS (now Czech Coal) in the late 1990s. Czech Position has learned that, from the Swiss perspective, judicial authorities here also appeared to have been deliberately uncooperative in the Gripen jet fighter probe.

A week after Czech PM Petr Nečas was derided for claiming his government has done more to fight corruption in its 18 months in power than was done in the previous 10 years, the tabloid Blesk on Thursday launched an online petition calling upon the police and judiciary services to thoroughly investigate corruption scandals — and published a list of “top 20” most-corrupt politicans and businessmen.

The coalition government can be best characterized as a “basket of crabs,” as the French would say. One bright exception is Pavel Zeman’s first 100 days in office as supreme state prosecutor. He is looking into some old cases — focusing on the Čunek, Gross, Drobil and OKD affairs — and although it is too late to reopen them, lessons can be learned over what went wrong, writes commentator Jan Schneider.