Topolanek says Paroubek wants to discredit him to gain power

The new Prime Minister and Civic Democrat chairman Mirek Topolanek told reporters on Wednesday that Social Democrat head and former Prime Minister Jiri Paroubek wants to discredit him over the case of the VAE company to regain power with his Social Democrats. At a special news conference, Mr Topolanek said that he had never been asked to meet commitments towards the creditors of the VAE company whose shareholder he had been and that he had never committed a credit fraud. Mr Topolanek added that police had investigated the case and had not found him guilty. He stressed that the Social Democrats were politicising the whole case to discredit him before the approaching October Senate and local elections and the Civic Democrat party congress. The police anti-corruption squad are investigating the suspicion that Mr Topolanek and his former partners in the VAE company gained a bank loan fraudulently in the late 1990s.