The disgraced Social Democrat David Rath is now sitting in prison, having been taken into custody to prevent him from witness tampering or from continuing in what state prosecutors claim was criminal activity. The former governor of the Central Bohemia region (he’s since resigned) was caught on Monday evening with a box filled with CZK 7m in cash, a box he says he thought was filled with bottles of wine. Seen as a flimsy excuse at best, it unravelled further when police then found CZK 30m hidden in the floorboards of his home.
Sources now say that the money was connected with a plan to siphon off money from the reconstruction of an old castle, and that Rath had been brought into the scheme by others for political cover. Plans for the castle’s reconstruction were allegedly redesigned so as to cost far more than the original ones allowed for, and in a way that would allow the various actors in the plot to take a cut. The project had been approved for funding by the European Union.
