Wikileaks – Czech corruption bad, could get worse

Detailing corruption in the wake of the fall of communism, the dispatches cover the period 2000-2010, portraying the republic as one of the most corrupt countries in Europe.

One cable from September 2005, signed off by the then ambassador William J. Cabaniss Junior, is entitled “Czech Corruption: Bad, and Unlikely to Get Better Soon.”

The document assessed that the number of corruption cases in the Czech Republic was “increasing, while the government's effectiveness in combating the problem is going down.”

While stating that the problem “could get even worse in the near future,” the embassy added that “the public does not seem sufficiently enraged, particularly in the light of favourable economic statistics, to vote against the parties responsible.

“The fact that corruption is widely acknowledged, yet tolerated, might be the most discouraging news of all,” the cable concluded, while simultaneously citing that 83 percent of Czechs claimed to “bothered” by corruption in a public poll.

The cable describes three types of corruption: petty corruption that was necessary before the velvet revolution of 1989; discrete acts by low-level employees of the state, who abuse their power for personal gain; and, "malfeasance by high level officials, particularly with large public procurements".

The cable concludes that, “There is even a Czech saying that those who don't steal from the state, cheat their families.”

In watchdog Transparency International’s annual index of corruption in 2010 it noted that there had been a deterioration in fighting sleaze in the Czech Republic, alongside Greece, Hungary, Italy, Madagascar, Niger and ... the United States. (pg/nh)

see cable here