Prague’s Charles University fired three faculty members and closed its Czech-Chinese Centre after it emerged that staff had received payments from the Chinese embassy. Milos Balabán, the head of the university’s Centre for Security Policy, and two social science faculty, set up a private firm through which the Chinese embassy funded two conferences organized by the Czech-Chinese Centre in 2018 and 2019. According to Czech outlet Aktuálnê, Balabán failed to report the payments during a university audit, but the invoices were confirmed by another shareholder of the company. Discovery of the payments comes amidst pushback by Czech politicians, civil society groups, and academics against their nation’s close economic ties with the Chinese regime.