The kids and their kids are coming to stay - help, I've got to clean the place up! And among the many layers of journalistic detritus on my sofa I found some copies of the swish European Business magaines - published in London - from the mid-2000s.
Image: The illlustration for this story on economic crime - European Business, from probably 2007-8 (I seem to have thrown away the original mag in the clean up).
I know I shouldn't, but I must admit to finding a certain delight in reading articles by London- or New York-based journalists about central-eastern Europe and spotting the obvious clues that they had never left their desks to be 'at the coal face' as it were to write their pieces.
So when, about four layers down in my spring clean, I came upon a clutch of these magazines, and opened one which, which, to my surprise featured a piece on white-collar crime and fraud in the region, I thought to myself: "Ho ho, what clangers has this fellow (or lass) made?"
I then looked down the page to get an even bigger surprise: the fellow behind the piece - and responsible for any clangers -was myself. I had completely forgotten ever writing for the magazine!
Reading through it, I found no clangers (honest - though I would say that, wouldn't I?), but found the comment by PwC's Mike Tallent on how Hungarians seemed to have such good numbers compared to the region rather telling.
So I've copied the piece here. My thanks to KPMG, PwC and, originally, those Coopers & Lybrand personnel who first alerted me to this subject.
Oh, I should also add that the businessman who was fighting his case a decade on in the Hungarian courts (top of second column, first page) lost, of course.
Second Page
