Ralsko: ANO mayor bought up houses on the cheap from the businessman he sold city land to

A scandal is brewing in the northern Czech town of Ralsko around Mayor Miloslav Tuma of the ANO movement: he sold a large parcel of municipal land to local businessman Vladimír Ržíma, and shortly afterward bought housing from the same businessman at knock-down prices — through his own company and family members. This came to light from documents on the property and land transactions.

In May 2020, at a law firm in Česká Lípa, Ržíma signed a contract with the town of Ralsko to purchase 27 land plots totaling 20.5 hectares — roughly the size of four and a half Wenceslas Squares in Prague. The package included forest, farmland and meadows. Under the deal, the businessman paid the town 5,313,000 crowns, becoming the sole owner of a vast area in the Ralsko-Náhlov district, on the site of a former military training ground.

Flats for next to nothing

Even before that sale, back in March 2020, Mayor Tuma personally bought one flat in Náhlov from Ržíma for just 300,000 crowns. That same year Tuma founded a company called Dream For Pets, in which he was the sole founder, and in spring 2021 it bought four more flats from Ržíma — effectively an entire apartment building — at 250,000 crowns each.

According to the company's published financial statements, however, it had no assets or funds at the time to cover such a purchase. The payment had to be made in cash — meaning the mayor personally handed the businessman around a million crowns. A bank transfer would inevitably have shown up in the company's accounts, which it did not.

In the summer of 2021, the mayor's company transferred two of those flats to his mother, while the other two went to his acquaintance Jaroslav Hanka — now deputy mayor, elected on the ODS ticket. Both Tuma's mother and Hanka paid the same token price of 250,000 crowns per flat, meaning the mayor's company made no profit whatsoever on the deal.

In February 2021, Tuma bought yet another flat in Stráž pod Ralskem — this time from Hanka himself, for half a million crowns. Then in December 2021 the dealings with Ržíma continued: the mayor's mother bought three more flats (half of an apartment building) from him in Náhlov, while Hanka took the other half. Later, Hanka together with the mayor's father, Miloslav Tuma Sr., bought another property in Náhlov from Ržíma's company Libex — locals call it the "culture house."

ČEZ's wind farm and the mayor's version

The land in question later drew the attention of ČEZ PV&Wind, a subsidiary of the energy giant ČEZ, which in 2025 unveiled plans for the Ralsko wind farm: 16 massive turbines with blade heights of up to 250 metres, 15 of which were slated for Ržíma's land. A ČEZ spokesperson confirmed the company had held talks with the plots' owner but declined to give details. The project was ultimately not carried out, and negotiations were called off.

Ržíma himself, who recently turned 80, denies negotiating with ČEZ, claiming that nine companies wanted to buy the land and he turned them all down. He refused to discuss the property sales to the mayor and his family, saying he has the right to sell his assets to whomever he chooses.

Mayor Tuma has rejected accusations that the cut-price housing deals were a "payback" for the sold municipal land, calling the suggestion serious and unfounded. He says the flats had long been sold through a real estate agency, and that his family and Hanka have traditionally been involved in property rental and construction. He also denies that this amounts to so-called "poverty trading" — buying up housing in deprived areas to rent out to socially vulnerable tenants — insisting that rent of around 5,000 crowns for a 3+1 flat is in line with market rates, and that most tenants are working people.

Notably, almost all the acquired properties (except for the flat in Stráž pod Ralskem) are located in the small, socially disadvantaged district of Ralsko-Náhlov. The 34-year-old mayor, who has led the town since 2018, has already been linked to other controversies — from concealing talks with ČEZ over the wind turbines to an irregular sale of land to a weapons company for a machine-gun shooting range, a deal currently under investigation by the regional prosecutor's office in Ústí nad Labem.

Read also: Rental scams in Prague: how to spot a fraud

Source: novinky.cz