Cyprus court freezes Czech businessman's assets worth CZK 13 billion

A Cypriot court has ordered banks to freeze Czech billionaire Radovan Vítek's assets worth CZK 13 billion, the German economic daily Handelsblatt reports.

The case concerns Vítek's investment and real estate company Czech Property Investments (CPI) and his disputes with former partners from the Czech Republic, Switzerland, and the U.S., Handelsblatt writes.

The publication writes that Vítek, who also has real estate interests in Germany, is known for his unorthodox business methods.

"The Czech businessman has created a real estate empire. His former business partners sued him, and a court in Cyprus has now agreed with their complaint," wrote Handelsblatt, which published the story on its website Monday evening. The publication added that he was "probably the largest property owner in Central Europe."

The news was picked up on Tuesday by Der Spiegel magazine.

According to Handelsblatt, Vítek's former partners have been filing lawsuits against the Czech investor in the U.S., Luxembourg, and Cyprus since 2015 for defrauding them through shell companies when building CPI. A court in Cyprus recently ordered banks to freeze part of Vítek's assets, the publication said.

CPI is the largest owner of shopping centers in the Czech Republic, the largest operator of hotels, and the second largest owner of apartments, according to the Realtiari server.
Radovan was previously implicated in the Pandora Papers, a global investigation to uncover money laundering associated with real estate purchases in France.

Handelsblatt reports that the deadline for Vítek's lawyers to present arguments expired at the end of April. Judges will decide by summer whether the mogul's assets will remain frozen until the conclusion of the court case, Handelsblatt added. It lists Czech-Swiss citizen Jiří Diviš as one of the plaintiffs in the suit.