The moment Mochovce is mentioned, the voice of Ron Freeman, first vice-president at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), assumes a wary tone. "Oh yeah?" he says. "What about it?"
Mochovce is a small, rather undistinguished town in the central European republic of Slovakia. It is not, reputedly, a beautiful spot. Few tourists go there, and the locality is notable only for a large, half-finished nuclear power plant which disfigures the surrounding landscape. But among EBRD officials, Mochovce is also the name of an $800 million project-finance transaction, the largest the bank has yet attempted. And although the deal has been suspended since last year, it remains at the centre of allegations of political bias that have been dogging the EBRD during the final stages of its negotiations with member governments for an Ecu10 billion ($8 billion) capital increase.
Ever since the EBRD opened in 1991 there have been questions - often mumbled sotto voce by critics - about whether the bank is sufficiently independent of political pressure. These have tended to focus on the proportionally high representation of French nationals among the bank's senior management.
It has frequently been pointed out that not only is the bank's president, Jacques de Larosière, French, but his number two, Freeman, is half French (he has a French mother and speaks the language fluently).