Do Czechs make better crooks?
Just days after PPF relieved institutional and small investors of billions of crowns of value at O2 CR with the active looking-the-other-way of the Prague Stock Exchange and Czech National Bank, Home Credit's Jiří Šmejc spoke to MFD about making a major American investment. Home Credit first mentioned this late last year, when Šmejc attended a fundraising gala for the Václav Havel Library Foundation. (PPF at a Václav Havel dinner! Those are paradoxes, aren't they?) At the time, LN named AT&T as Home Credit's possible partner, but this raises a pertinent question: What do Czechs possibly know about high finance that U.S. bankers don't? American bankers have had far more time to learn how to rig Libor, lend to drug dealers and launder Russian money. Even classic Czech asset-stripping (tunneling) is old hat on Wall Street. Clearly, though, there must be something about the Czech criminal mind that sets it apart.
Glossary of difficult words
to relieve someone of something - to take a burden from someone; to deprive someone of something;pertinent - relevant or applicable to a particular matter;
to rig something - to manage or conduct something fraudulently so as to produce a result or situation that is advantageous to a particular person;
Libor - London Interbank Offered Rate;
old hat - used to refer to something that is uninteresting, predictable, tritely familiar or old-fashioned.