New Prague tourist trail
PRAGUE – Prague has long been a favoured destination for its medieval looks and cheap beer, but one travel agency has freshened up the offering with a new type of tourism experience which spotlights graft and sleaze.
Corrupt Tour has made a hit out of “The Best of the Worst” trips showing places tied to scandals that have plagued the country’s political life.
The project has caught the zeitgeist in a country of 10.5 million people, where public debate has been dominated by revelations of dodgy deals in everything from multi-billion dollar army contracts to a scheme suspected of skimming nearly a cent from every city transport ticket.”Our target is to get Czech corruption on a UNESCO list of the world’s cultural heritage,” said Pavel Kotyza, one of the Corrupt tour organisers.
The Czech Republic, like neighbouring Slovakia and other formerly communist countries, has undergone a profound economic and political transformation over the last two decades. But many of the country’s institutions have struggled with graft and a system where prosecutions are rare and convictions even more so.
The new agency offers a range of tours. One popular tour, called Safari, takes tourists around the villas and walled-in estates of businessman linked to big state orders.
The emergence of a corruption tour agency reflects not only that graft is a problem, but that public awareness for a clean-up is also growing.
The country’s centre-right government in office since 2010, as well as new leadership at city hall, have won cautious praise from non-governmental groups for improving the way taxpayers’ money is spent.-Reuters
