The chairman of the senate of the Prague municipal court, Lukáš Svrček, asked Hromady that when clients report damages of 4.5 billion crowns and only 1.4 billion were secured in the property of the defendants and the company, where are the remaining three billion.
Hromada replied that he assumed it was on an account somewhere in the US. Svrček therefore asked him why he was not interested in this amount, when he was facing eight years in prison, and why he did not pressure Ortinski to tell where the money was, when he was also his cousin.
“Did you see any balance or statement from the Bank of America account, where there would be three billion crowns?” the judge asked Hromady. “He saw it, but only after the police intervened,” the defendant pointed out, adding that it was Ortinský who showed him the account statement. “And don’t you happen to have it hidden somewhere?” asked the judge afterwards. “No,” answered Hromada briefly. “That’s a shame,” Svrček then stated.
They promised huge profits, lured 2.4 billion
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Thousands injured
According to the indictment, Ortinský, Hromada and the third defendant, Petr Šorfa (41), through the company JO Investment, lured money from almost 3,800 people and 162 legal entities from March 2016 to February 2020 and caused them damage in the amount of almost 2.4 billion crowns.
State representative Boris Havel stated in the text of the indictment, a copy of which is available to Novinky, that the defendants together illegally and under false pretenses offered people investments on world stock exchanges in the USA, Europe and Asia with a high valuation, in the amount of up to 30 percent of the deposit .
The promised investment activity of Ortinský and spol. according to the public prosecutor, they did not perform and, with the exception of brokerage commissions, they withdrew the money to their accounts and used it for their own needs.
“Primarily for the purchase of real estate, luxury vehicles, goods (including gold and jewelry, editor’s note) and also for the consumption of persons performing activities for the JO Investment company,” Havel stated in the indictment, which has a total of 384 pages. According to him, Ortinský earned more than a quarter of a billion crowns, and his co-defendants tens of millions.
Judge: I don’t understand
After Hromada described on Tuesday that Ortinský showed him a statement from the Bank of America account with the aforementioned billions in 2020 or 2021, the judge spoke again: “Why isn’t the money here even in three years? I don’t understand it at all,” wondered Svrček.
“I can’t explain it,” responded Hromada to his words. “I have a feeling that there were 216 or 226 million Australian dollars,” Hromada explained. But he was unable to state why the account at the American bank was held in Australian and not American dollars. They say it was Ortinsky’s favorite currency.
When asked by the court to whom the money belongs, the defendant stated that the company JO Investment. “Why doesn’t the company issue them when it is insolvent?” wondered the judge. “That’s a question for Mr. Ortinski. I’m not a company executive,” Hromada defended himself. “But you are family, you could have asked him about it,” Svrček thought.
But Ortinsky refused to testify on Monday, and thus to comment on the money in any way. He only noted that he did not agree with the indictment and that he had not committed any fraud. Hromada repeated the same on Tuesday. According to him, money from clients was traded normally. Ortinský was the only one who allegedly made these deals. According to Hromada, who now earns a living as a taxi driver, like Šorfa, he only took care of administrative matters at the time.
Lured billions for a luxurious life. The court began to deal with the huge frauds surrounding the young entrepreneur
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On Tuesday, the court read Ortinski’s statement to the police, in which the defendant stated that the clientele of their company was satisfied until the police intervened in 2020. “So I don’t understand why this investigation started when everyone was happy. I consider the accusations to be unjustified, the portfolio is significantly greater than the alleged damage,” claimed Ortynský, saying that behind everything he sees someone’s efforts to get to his property. However, he did not say where the said portfolio had disappeared.
Mother got millions
Ortinsky’s mother Jitka (54), who is a Prague police officer, also stood before the court. She also declined to testify on Tuesday. She only pointed out that she herself was a client of the JO Investment company on the basis of the contract, in which she invested funds and then only collected their valuation.
It emerged from her police interrogation, which was also read by the court, that she gave her son 200,000 crowns in cash in 2017 to invest in his company. She said she left the strategy up to him. She subsequently admitted to the police that she first received a million crowns from JO Investment, which she used to buy a luxury Mercedes-Benz GLC 250 car.
She also admitted that she gradually “used for her own needs” several amounts from her son’s company, a total of another 2.5 million crowns. She said she was not surprised at the high valuation she received from her original deposit of two thousand.
“I do not agree with the accusation. I properly taxed my withdrawals. I think that in my case it is not about ill-gotten gains. I feel discriminated against by my accusation,” Ortinská told the police.
According to the prosecutor, the accused trio of businessmen committed fraud against thousands of clients, and the policewoman Ortinská legalized proceeds from criminal activity, i.e. money laundering.
He proposes an eight-year prison sentence, a fine of 25 million crowns and a ban on activities for ten years. Šorfa and Hromada were sentenced to six years in prison, a fine of ten million euros and also a ten-year ban on activities. For Ortinská, Havel wants a three-year probation and a fine of two million. The court proceedings will continue in mid-May.
The police seized the houses, apartments, cars and jewelry of those accused of a billion-dollar fraud
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