Czech court reopens huge fraud case from 1990s

Prague, Aug 16 (CTK) - The Prague Municipal Court Thursday reopened the halted proceedings of a huge fraud that involved billionaire Pavel Tykac and within which more than one billion crowns disappeared from the CS Fondy investment fund in the late 1990s.

A state attorney proposed that the case involving Tykac, now owner of the Czech Coal mining company, and three other persons be reopened since new evidence appeared.

A controversial businessman, Frantisek Busek (previously named Chobot) told a court in different proceedings earlier this year that he helped Tykac strip the CS Fondy of its assets.

The court has concluded that the halting of the proceedings in 2007 was premature as testimonies of further witnesses may bring new evidence.

In 1997, 1.23 billion crowns were paid by the CS Fondy to the Umana brokers for shares of a firm that proved to be of no value and the money disappeared in overseas bank accounts. Four members of Umana received prison sentences for the fraud.

The CS Fondy investment fund was then administered by Motoinvest, one of whose owners was Tykac. Tykac claimed he had nothing to do with the suspicious transaction.

The controversial Motoinvest financial group made very high profits in the 1990s and it is considered one of the symbols of the then "wild privatisation."

Six years ago Tykac bought a 40-percent stake in the Mostecka uhelna (MUS) mining company, now renamed to Czech Coal. Last year he bought the rest of the company, allegedly paying 10 billion crowns for it.

Czech Coal is the second biggest producer of brown coal in the Czech Republic, following the Severoceske doly miner that is part of the state-controlled CEZ group.