Prague Blocks Soukup's Access to His Former Headquarters in Braník

Prague's city hall has blocked entrepreneur Jaromír Soukup's access to an office complex in Prague's Braník district, where he previously kept an office and a recording studio. The reason is an outstanding debt of roughly 940,000 crowns, which fell due at the end of August.

The building in Braník once belonged to Soukup himself, but mounting debts forced him to sell it. Two years ago, Prague City Hall bought the complex at auction for almost 650 million crowns — even though, according to an expert's estimate, the property's real value was less than half that sum. The city plans to house several schools in the building.

The debt and the blocked access

Despite selling the building, Soukup continued to occupy two of its floors, where his office and studio were located, and where his official permanent residence was registered. However, he had not been paying rent to the city. The management company TCP had agreed with him on a repayment schedule, but according to reports, the entrepreneur failed to meet the deadline.

"He didn't pay, so his access was blocked. He can't enter the premises he used to occupy," confirmed Adam Zábranský, Prague's city councillor for property from the Czech Pirate Party. According to him, the debt amounts to about 940,000 crowns.

The original agreement was that Soukup would settle the entire debt over the summer, after which the city would decide whether he could stay in the building and whether a new lease would be signed. City hall had considered giving him extra time, but Zábranský said he personally considers that unacceptable: "That would simply be a mockery."

The councillor acknowledged that if Soukup paid off the whole debt at once, there might still be a chance to negotiate a new lease — though, given the entrepreneur's track record of payment discipline, he himself would not recommend the city agree to it. In his view, it's already time to prepare a claim demanding that the premises be vacated and the debt recovered through the courts.

Soukup's own response

Jaromír Soukup himself said he was aware of the city's actions. "I haven't been dealing with anything because of my health," he explained, referring to the brutal baseball-bat attack he suffered in early August, after which he ended up in Prague's Thomayer Hospital and underwent at least two operations on his left arm.

"I'll sort this out quickly," the entrepreneur added, insisting he has the money to cover the full amount. Shortly afterward, he reportedly called the management company by phone and promised to transfer additional funds.

"Fifteen minutes ago he called me and said he'd sent about 200,000 crowns. But even so, he'll still be more than four months behind — that's more than we usually allow," said Josef Blaha, chairman of the board of the management company TCP.

He did not rule out that the building might still be leased back to Soukup. "The question is whether it's better to leave the space completely empty or to have someone there who, even if erratically, pays sums in the hundreds of thousands of crowns," Blaha noted. "Right now we're at the stage of deciding whether we'll let him back in if he pays off the rest, or not," he concluded.

Read also: Lease agreements in Czechia 2026: nájem vs podnájem, kauce

Around Prague, based on reporting by novinky.cz