The Regional Court in České Budějovice today approved that Czech Property Investments (CPI) should receive over CZK 2 million in insolvency proceedings with the Mladá Fronta publishing house. This is interest on the amount that the publishing house owed the company, according to the insolvency register. CPI has previously received CZK 25.8 million. The next steps in the proceedings depend on how the High Court in Prague decides on the appeal against bankruptcy, announced insolvency administrator Petra Hýsková.
The administrator proposed to pay the CPI money. One creditor, Crane Constancy Investments (CCI), objected. “The Regional Public Prosecutor’s Office considers the objections to be unfounded, the insolvency administrator’s proposal to be factually correct and justified,” said the public prosecutor Michaela Hojdarová today.
The Mladá fronta publishing house owed CZK 23.2 million to CPI, the majority owner of which is Radovan Vítek. The CPI provided such a high loan to Mladá fronta, and another debt arose on interest. As a secured creditor, CPI owned some trademarks and internet domains such as euro.cz or profit.cz. CPI has previously received CZK 25.8 million from the proceeds from the sale of parts of the publishing house. CPI is one of the secured creditors.
Last September, the Regional Court in České Budějovice again declared bankruptcy of the Mladá fronta publishing house. According to the court, a company cannot be reorganized if it has no operations or employees. Last August, the High Court in Prague annulled a previous resolution of the regional court, which rejected the proposal to reorganize the publishing house and sent Mladá fronta into bankruptcy. Now the High Court in Prague is once again handling an appeal against bankruptcy. If it confirms the bankruptcy, only then, according to Hýsková, will it be possible to monetize all the publishing house’s assets.
“It is possible that we will still receive some income if we manage to maintain the value of the last sub-components. In the meantime, we try to recover some other receivables, not all of them are still recovered, but recovery is problematic without documents,” said Hyskova.
There are around CZK 50 million in the assets accounts of Mladá fronta. Receivables were tens of millions higher than this amount last year. Lenders previously asked about 400 million for the publishing house. According to older information, the accumulated loss of the Mladá fronta was almost CZK 200 million. The company no longer has any employees. The court closed the publishing house.
Mladá fronta, which published the economic weekly Euro, several other magazines or books, was sent to bankruptcy for the first time the year before last. Hýsková then started selling the publisher’s property. Last January, the online division of the publishing house, including the trademarks of the printed magazine Euro, was sold at auction. It was bought by Internet Info for CZK 15.8 million. In the same month, some magazines auctioned for almost CZK 4.2 million. In February, Albatros Media bought the publishing’s book division for USD 14 million.
Source: CTK
