Janusz Konieczny
End of the Beginning
This is my forty-fourth and last comment in the Anticorruption Endowment colours. I joined the Anticorruption Endowment (NFPK) shortly after its founding day in 2011 and now I feel it’s time for change. The Anticorruption Endowment enabled…
Jána Kuciak’s murder must not deter us
Ján Kuciak was an independent young investigative journalist, who took his work for a mission. He knew that mafia groups must be confronted and he monitored their activities. In one particular cause, criminal proceedings were restarted…
Why have they defected from an investigation board?
The story of the parliamentary commission investigating the bumpy Highway D47 was one of a complete fiasco, to tell the least. It virtually ran on an autopilot. Visit the Chamber of Deputies website on the “performance” of this body[1] and…
Strange reshuffle starts at Ministry of Finance
Only a few days after her appointment, the new Minister of Finance, Alena Schillerová, embarked on a “house” reorganization at her ministry and sacked the long-serving deputy minister Ondřej Závodský. It was a blitz, and a dubious one at…
Harsh things: Water privatization
Some political leaders claim corruption must be fought by means of sweeping privatization, for the state is a most miserable owner. It holds water, but at the same time privatization is a much abused concept that breeds thievery and…
Who cheats in election campaigns?
I recall my conversation with a fairly well-known pop singer, who sang at the campaign meetings of a fairly well-known political party in 2010. He told me he had earned a multiple of his usual gig price and, to put it briefly, had made a…
Top courts make fateful mistakes
The law on free access to information is a core anticorruption instrument, without which it would be hardly conceivable to imagine the control and management of public finances. Various groups pursuing various interest have often tried—but…
Strange party donors
The campaign for the autumn parliamentary elections has slowly but surely kicked off to a start and it would seem that this time, nongovernmental organizations, investigative journalists and concerned citizens might not have so much work…
Absurd game for hundreds of millions
Court sat today on the Karlovy Vary “polls”. The case saw light in December 2006, when Jiří who holds the NFPK Prize for Courage 2016, disclosed a video recording of the lottery on the KV Aréna contractor, made during a city council…