Budweiser audit to be buried quietly?

Looks like the Ministry of Agriculture, which owns the Budweiser Budvar brewery, is hoping to pull a heavy fire blanket over the controversial audit of the brewery. The audit was supposed to have been completed in June. Now Richard Hunt, a market observer in the Czech Republic, told BRAUWELT International that the Ministry informed him that the report is with them, that somebody is reading through it and that other ministries have to read it, too. "They seem a bit vague about it" was his impression.

As we reported, the audit was forced upon the brewery by the Ministry in February this year in a power battle between the Ministry and the brewery management over who’s got the most say in running the brewery.

Mr Hunt requested to see the audit under the Czech Freedom of Information Act. The Ministry refused him access to the audit report on the grounds that it contains business secrets. He expected that. Still, Mr Hunt plans to appeal against the decision.

He was told by the Ministry, though, that the fee to the auditors has not increased despite them working on it for months. "Such a scenario seems utterly preposterous", Mr Hunt said. Allegedly, the Ministry is paying HZ Consult only CZK 200,000 (about EUR 8000) for auditing Budweiser Budvar, while HZ Consult allegedly sent in 15 auditors to do the job.

What is more, the Ministry confirmed to Mr Hunt that the lawyer Tomas Jindra, who sparked much controversy when he was appointed to "lead" the audit, even though he was on Budweiser Budvar’s supervisory board, was stood down from this role in April. That was when the Czech Prime Minister Petr Necas also kicked him off the brewery’s supervisory board, where he had installed himself at the Minister of Agriculture’s behest.

Mr Hunt thinks that the Ministry of Agriculture wants to quietly bury the audit over the summer recess, when ordinary Czechs will have other things on their minds – like pickling cucumbers for the winter.