Luxury cars, millions and villas. The prosecutor reaches for people’s property from the tax case

When the public prosecutor listed in the indictment the assets found in the huge tax case surrounding Petr Speychal – one of the once richest Czechs – it was published on ten pages.

Fourteen properties are on the list, including the office building in Michli, Prague, from which Speychal held office. In addition, the police blocked twenty-five cars or money in twenty bank accounts.

Despite how extensive the property was secured, its value does not reach the amount of damage that the suspects caused, according to public prosecutor Petra Ullrichová. In the indictment, which is available to Seznam Zpravy, the plaintiff calculated it at 846,519,850 crowns.

In this document, as Seznam Zprávy has already reported, she described the activities of a group of twenty-one people who are going to court on suspicion of tax evasion related to the business of ČKD Praha DIZ. At the same time, the plaintiff proposed that the three main defendants should lose their property – in addition to Petr Speychal, it concerns his closest collaborator Petr Gregor and the former financial director of ČKD Soňa Vladařová.

Speychal should therefore lose at least 8.8 million crowns in seven bank accounts if he is finally sentenced to this punishment.

In addition, the plaintiff wants the state to confiscate the building belonging to the company Sychrov Real, whose owner, according to the records of the owners, is British citizen Nicholas Peter Cronin. However, according to the indictment, Speychal has a direct relationship with this company.

It was in this three-story office building that Petr Speychal held regular meetings. In addition, as the plaintiff stated, four members of the organized group gradually deposited over 832 million crowns in cash. According to the indictment, they withdrew this money from the bank accounts of companies that Speychal secretly owned.

“The defendants transported the selected cash to the premises, where they handed it over to Petar Gregor, or Petar Speychal, or other members of an organized criminal group,” State Attorney Ullrichová described in the indictment, according to which Speychal hid a significant portion of this money.

Attorney Josef Monsport, who represents Speychal, is not surprised by the plaintiff’s proposal that the state building be forfeited.

“The property has been blocked for years, and if the plaintiff claims it belongs to Mr. Speychal and at the same time (claims) enormous damage, it makes sense from her point of view. However, even here the basis for such a decision is the proof of guilt or innocence,” wrote Monsport.

At the same time, Petr Speychal has denied guilt from the beginning, and his lawyer added that the investigators did not have enough evidence against his client.

The police also seized seventeen cars that were registered to the company RPBA Invest. According to the register of final owners, its owner is the aforementioned Nicholas Peter Cronin.

The police have already sold eight of the seventeen cars at auction. The most, over 1.93 million, was obtained for a Porsche Panamera 4S. The police announced a nationwide search for nine more cars – for example, a Porsche 911 Turbo or a Rolls Royce Phantom Coupé.

The police have already auctioned off a car and a motorcycle that were previously owned by the other indicted lawyer, Pavel Kačírek. Seznam told Zpravám that, in his opinion, they sold the motor vehicles below the price. “I bought a Land Rover for two million crowns, in a year and a half I drove 35,000 kilometers and they sold it for 850,000. At the same time, similar cars were offered for a price of around 1.6 million,” said Kačírek.

According to Kačírek, the police also sold a Yamaha motorcycle for too low a price, which, according to him, was almost new and had only driven about five hundred kilometers. The new owner acquired the motorcycle at auction for 181,000 crowns. “If the court acquits me of the charges, they will give me the money,” recalled defendant Pavel Kačírek.

Robert Wolf, the former director of ČKD Praha DIZ, also has extensive assets secured.

He has a police seal on his family home or apartment building in Brno. In addition, the police have already sold two of his Volvo XCZ7 and Ford Mustang cars for a total of 1.054 million crowns. In addition, the police are still looking for the Suzuki DL 1000 motorcycle. Wolf said there was not a single piece of evidence to show he had committed a crime.

However, whether the group will be sentenced will not be decided until next year. The Prague Municipal Court will start dealing with this case this September.

What punishments does the prosecution want for the main actors in the case?