Insolvency Administrator from České Budějovice Stole 67 Million Crowns from Creditors

The Regional Court in České Budějovice has sentenced 73-year-old former insolvency administrator Václav Svoboda to five years in prison for embezzling nearly 67 million crowns from creditors. For thirteen years, the man — repeatedly appointed by courts to liquidate debtors' assets — pocketed the recovered funds instead of passing them on to the people owed the money.

An economist and engineer by training, Svoboda had worked as an insolvency administrator since 2009. Handling debtors' cases assigned to him by the courts, he would sell off their property or collect regular repayments, then divert a portion of the proceeds to his own accounts or withdraw them in cash instead of forwarding them to creditors. He plugged the resulting shortfalls with money from the sale of other debtors' assets — a trick that allowed the fraud to go unnoticed by regulators and the Ministry of Justice for years.

A confession and a blackmail defence

The scheme unravelled in 2022, when Svoboda himself turned himself in to the Regional Court in České Budějovice. During the trial, he claimed he had acted under pressure from a family of Kosovo Albanians who allegedly extorted money from him — by phone, by text message, and once even at gunpoint. According to his account, it all began with a small loan to the family, but their demands kept escalating.

Prosecutor Richard Cisař noted that South Bohemian investigators had looked into this claim, and no evidence of extortion was ever found. Judge Soňa Biskupová Fišerová had already expressed doubts last year that Svoboda handed over tens of millions to the Albanians out of fear — in her view, it was more likely that he had cooperated with them voluntarily, investing the money in a failed real-estate project in Kotor, Montenegro. Svoboda himself rejected this version and had previously filed a complaint with Montenegrin police, trying to prove that at least 45 million crowns had ended up in property there — but the complaint led nowhere.

Robbed twice over

Dozens of creditors suffered as a result of Svoboda's actions. One company was never paid the 14.6 million crowns it was owed, another lost 12.7 million, and a third 11.8 million. Among the victims was also Sberbank, which has since ceased operations in the Czech Republic, a leasing company, and debtors themselves whose payments never reached their creditors. "Creditors were effectively robbed twice," the judge remarked, referring to the fact that they were first left unpaid by the debtors, and then by the very administrator the court had appointed to protect their interests.

In court, Svoboda insisted he had not kept a single crown of the stolen 67 million for himself, while his lawyers pointed to his modest lifestyle — no expensive cars, no lavish holidays. The judge refused to suspend his sentence despite his advanced age and poor health, noting that out of his 35,000-crown pension, he pays 30,000 crowns each month toward compensating the damage.

A similar case was previously heard against 80-year-old Prague lawyer Hana Suková, who defrauded clients of 161 million crowns over the years and received a non-final sentence of seven years. Svoboda, for his part, intends to appeal — he filed an appeal immediately after the verdict was announced, and his case will now go before a higher court.

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Around Prague, based on reporting by seznamzpravy.cz