Former President Vaclav Klaus prematurely ended a live interview for Czech Radio-Radiožurnál yesterday, in which he answered questions about his alleged role in a loan to the Soviet Union. He accused the show’s moderator of lying. According to Czech Radio (ČRo), however, the questions asked were correct and factual. Some media outlets reported last week that the Klaus-led Treasury Department had secretly sent a USD 1.3 billion loan to the Soviet Union in the late 1980s and 1990s. Klaus repeatedly called it a lie.
Klaus reiterated today in Radiožurnál that this is a handful of lies and a fabrication of “activist journalists.” He denied that he had anything to do with the money transfer. According to Klaus, no one sent any money to the Soviet Union, only a credit line was opened for the purchase of goods from Czechoslovakia, which was under the responsibility of the Ministry of Foreign Trade, not finance.
In an interview, Klaus repeatedly criticized the moderator of Radiožurnál for not listening to him and for “going crazy”. He also accused him of lying and of not trying to understand his explanation. “You are deliberately lying with other comrades from Hospodářské noviny, you probably belong to their clan,” Klaus told the moderator. After about ten minutes, Klaus got up and left the studio angrily.
The radio rejects complaints about the way the interview is conducted. “Vladimír Kroc, the moderator of the 20 Minutes of Radiožurnál program, asked the questions factually and correctly,” Czech Radio spokesman Jiří Hošna told ČTK when asked. According to him, the radio is convinced that the moderator conducted an interview in accordance with the Act on the Czech Radio and the Code of this public media.
An article about the fact that the Klaus-led Ministry of Finance secretly sent a loan to the Soviet Union at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s was published by Hospodářské noviny on May 25. The daily refers to documents from the National Archive, which it found in cooperation with the Aktuálně.cz server, the Respekt weekly and the anti-corruption organization Růžový panter.
Already on the day the article was published, Klaus described the information as an incredible handful of lies. According to him, it was a pre-arranged attack on his person, possibly with the aim of blocking his possible return to politics.
The Václav Klaus Institute described the claims contained in the article as false and as an example of a “monstrous disinformation campaign based on total unprofessionalism and ignorance”. The Economia publishing house, which includes Hospodářské noviny and the Aktuálně.cz server, called for a public apology over the weekend.
In the answer published today, the editors-in-chief of Hospodářské noviny and Aktuálně.cz emphatically rejected the accusations of leading a false campaign. According to them, the editors and editors of the article used some simplistic connections without bad intentions, which, however, did not affect the essence of the statement that there are many ambiguities surrounding the creation and settlement of the so-called Russian debt. “We have corrected the wording in which we committed too large media abbreviations,” said the editors-in-chief.
Source: CTK
