The housing cooperative Svatopluk, which unites some of the former clients of the bankrupt company H-System, has to pay the bankruptcy trustee roughly one million crowns as rent for land under terraced houses in Horoměřice. The decision was made yesterday by the district court for Prague – West. The verdict is invalid, said the head of the creditors’ committee and the lawyer of the largest creditor of H-System, Petr Pavel. The cooperative will appeal against the verdict, SBD chairman Svatopluk Martin Junek said.
“For me, this is proof that the courts do not decide fairly,” said Junek. In addition to the lawsuit for one million crowns, the cooperative is facing another lawsuit for about 21 million for rent for the apartments themselves, which their users have definitively bought out of bankruptcy this year. “I consider both of these lawsuits to be hyenism,” added Junek.
Interest has also been added to the amounts originally claimed since 2019, when the bankruptcy trustee Josef Monsport filed lawsuits. In total, the cooperative faces the threat that it will have to pay more than 30 million crowns instead of the original roughly CZK 22 million. Monsport has sued the cooperative for rent for the last three years, the rest, according to him, has already expired.
“We could rightly ask why the trustee has not enforced this nonsensical rent since 2008. Indeed, if the courts decide on the eligibility of the requested rent, then the trustee should be liable to creditors from the lost rent from 2008 to 2016, which would amount to about CZK 60 million,” said Junek.
The rent, which, according to the SBD court, now has to be paid, is for land under terraced houses, which were excluded from bankruptcy in the past. According to Junek, the cooperative did not use the land, and the administrator did not even take care of their maintenance, he said.
A total of 55 users of apartments in Horoměřice bought the property this year, so they became their owners in the cadastre. Four users have left the flats, they will be sold again, one of the remaining flats is subject to legal proceedings for exemption from bankruptcy.
After its establishment in 1993, H-System concluded contracts with hundreds of interested parties for the construction and transfer of flats and houses in the vicinity of Prague. In the autumn of 1997, it went bankrupt, completing only 34 family houses. A thousand people lost a total of a billion crowns after the fall of the H-System. Majority shareholder Petr Smetka spent 12 years in prison for tunneling the company. The situation of Svatopluk members is specific in that they arrived at the flats at their own expense, but without the consent of the bankruptcy court. According to Junek, however, people had the consent of the former bankruptcy trustee.
