Prague, July 30 (CTK) – Bankruptcy administrator Josef Monsport said on Monday the clients of the Czech bankrupt H-system housing project will not to be moved out from their homes until the case is solved, senator Jiri Cunek (Christian Democrats, KDU-CSL) has told journalists.
He said this after Monsport had a meeting with representatives of the Svatopluk housing cooperative at which Prime Minister Andrej Babis (ANO) served as the mediator.
During August, Svatopluk and Monsport are to agree on the institution that is to evaluate the property in Horomerice, where the housing project is situated.
They should also agree on the way the houses and the local plots will be evaluated and by what date.
“Monsport said before Babis that he will not move out anyone from Horomerice until the case is finished. He said he would not apply the decision by the Supreme Court (NS) that they should move within a month,” Cunek said.
Cunek said it was vital for both sides to commission the expert report.
“Life is colourful. Now there will be the evaluation,” he added.
Babis told journalists the case was complicated, having been dealt with for 20 years. It will be impossible to resolve it soon, he added.
“I think that we have found an agreement regarding further steps. It is vital that the people are not threatened with eviction and that there was an agreement on the evaluation of the flats and land,” Babis said.
The representative of Svatopluk, Martin Junek, said it was a pity that the main creditor had not been obliging towards the rest of the creditors.
“I hoped very much that the firm Gomanold, represented by Petr Pavel, will be somehow obliging towards us and will not insist on the payment of the claims, but the reverse was true. The firm still insists on getting as much money as possible from the bankruptcy proceedings, while us, the H-System clients, will have to pay for this somehow,” Junek said.
The NS has ruled lately that the Svatopluk housing cooperative members must leave their flats in eight blocks in Horomerice, which they completed on their own after H-System went bankrupt, within a month of the court verdict’s effect. The court complied with Monsport who would like to sell the flats in Horomerice in order to compensate all the damaged clients.
The verdict affects 60 families who sharply disagree with it and refuse to leave their flats. They say they have no money to finance another housing and that the one-month deadline is too short.
In total, some 1000 people were damaged in the H-system case.
The NS declared the rent contracts between the Svatopluk cooperative and the dwellers absolutely void, since Svatopluk completed a developer project on the H-System plots, thereby actually investing money in another owner’s property.
After its establishment in 1993, the H-System developer signed contracts on the construction of flats and houses near Prague with hundreds of clients. However, it went bankrupt in 1997, after it built only 34 houses. In total, the clients lost about one billion crowns. H-System’s majority owner Petr Smetka spent 12 years in prison.
