No dirty money, no tunnelers

Václav Klaus made history by declaring that there is no such thing as dirty money, although he likes to point out that what he actually said is that it's difficult to distinguish between the clean and the dirty varieties. He will now go down in history not only for his amnesty, but also for declaring that there are no tunnelers. What he literally told Právo is that no one has been or could be convicted of being a tunneler, but rather for committing this or that concrete criminal act. Let's not accuse each other of tunneling, he said, because it leads nowhere. Klaus the economist surely knows that it is indeed possible to distinguish between fraudulent asset-stripping and good corporate governance, if one's heart is in it, just as it is possible to trace the origin of dirty money. Klaus the economist knows this, but Klaus the apologist instead says we need more people like Viktor Kožený. More non-tunnelers, that is.