Prague, Sept 8 (CTK) – Further Chinese investments will come to the Czech Republic, thanks to which new firms with new jobs will be created, President Milos Zeman’s spokesman Jiri Ovcacek said at a press conference Tuesday.
Zeman estimated the first investment wave by the Chinese CEFC Group that signed three contracts with Czech companies during Zeman’s visit to China last week at ten billion crowns. He said further will follow.
The CEFC financial and energy firm will have stakes in the biggest Czech air carrier Travel Service and the Pivovary Lobkowicz brewery and it will become a strategic partner of the Medea media company.
It also announced the purchase of the football first league Slavia Praha club, the building of the former Zivnobanka bank in Prague and other properties.
“The president, as he put it, has unleashed a chain reaction in the good sense of the word that will not end in an explosion, but on the contrary, in the development of Czech-Chinese economic relations,” Ovcacek said.
The Czech financial daily Hospodarske noviny (HN) has written that Jaroslav Tvrdik, former defence minister and an influential Social Democrat (CSSD), president of the Mixed Czech-Chinese Chamber of Mutual Cooperation, advised CEFC in the purchases.
He allegedly recommended to the Chinese investors companies whose owners he knows very well.
CEFC named Tvrdik in summer its representative for Europe where it wants to expand. Prague is to be the headquarters and the major partner is to be the J&T financial group.
HN also wrote that several CEFC managers will gradually move to Prague and the firm’s European centre is to be seated in the Zivnobanka building.
The Chinese also allegedly bought four houses in Prague’s luxury Orechovka neighbourhood where the managers and their families will live.
On his way back from China, where he accompanied Zeman, Tvrdik suffered from health problems and was taken to the Prague-Motol hospital after return.
