Anti-corruption police raided the headquarters of CzechInvest, searching for documents, computers and laptops. Even though the police remains tight-lipped on the case, Radio Prague says CzechInvest is suspected of manipulating a tender for the management of a database that helps foreign investors search for industrial zones in the Czech Republic.
The CZK 3.2m job was handed to a company called Grafin.
Auditors from the Ministry of Trade and Industry had already begun looking into the matter, which was also criticized by Transparency International’s director Stanislav Beranek. “When we investigated the case, we followed a chain of companies which finished in Panama-in an offshore company in Panama,” said Beranek. “And according to the Panama Trade Register this company was owned by a certain lawyer. There is suspicion that this company is personally connected with friends of Miroslav Křížek, the director of Czech Invest.”
The Minister of Trade and Industry Martin Kuba says Křížek would be sacked if it’s shown that the tender was mismanaged, or distorted by fraud.
