Village near Prague swaps land with billionaire — and loses millions to an expert's mistake

The village of Jevany near Prague, popular among wealthy residents and cultural figures, has carried out a land swap with billionaire Zdeněk Toman, brother of a former Czech Social Democratic Party (ČSSD) agriculture minister. According to calculations by opposition councillors, the municipality may have lost around 8 million crowns on the deal due to a flawed valuation of one of the plots.

On paper, the plan looked like a win-win: the businessman would get land opposite his villa to secure more privacy, while in exchange the village expected to gain a plot for a new fire station. In practice, things turned out rather differently.

How the swap unfolded

The municipality handed Toman a large 6,700-square-metre building plot in a prime location — land where a multi-metre-high historical embankment made construction all but impossible. "We were glad to get rid of this problematic plot," explained Jevany's mayor, Pavlína Kratochvílová (ODS).

In return, the village received several plots from Toman: a 2,400-square-metre forest parcel, an 1,800-square-metre building plot, 1.8 hectares of forest and meadow, and a five-hectare field near the settlement of Bohumil. Toman also paid the municipality an additional 14 million crowns.

To compare the value of the plots, an independent appraisal was commissioned in 2024 — and this is where the trouble began. The expert hired by the municipality, Michal Oliva, classified Toman's 2,400-square-metre forest plot as a building plot and valued it at 8 million crowns — this was precisely the parcel the village was counting on for its future fire station.

The expert's fatal error

In reality, under the local zoning plan the plot is designated as forest land — meaning construction there is simply not permitted. Opposition councillors commissioned their own independent appraisal, which last week revealed the plot's real value to be just 161,000 crowns, since it is non-buildable forest land with no alternative use, including recreational or commercial purposes. Experts also noted that the trees on the plot hold little value, being mostly young self-seeded growth.

Michal Oliva, the author of the original appraisal, now admits the mistake. "If the town can't build there, then the report apparently doesn't reflect reality. And that's exactly the case," he said.

According to opposition councillor Lucie Hladká's calculations, the error effectively cost the village around 8 million crowns — had the municipality known the plot's true value in advance, it could have demanded more valuable land or a larger cash payment from Toman.

Who's to blame, and what happens next

Minutes from the council meeting in October 2024 show that the opposition had opposed the deal from the outset, pointing out that construction on the forest plot was not allowed and that changing its zoning status would be a long and complicated process, since the area falls within a so-called ecological stability zone. Despite this, the mayor signed the exchange agreement seven months later.

Kratochvílová admits she failed to notice that the plot had been mistakenly classified as a building plot in the 2024 report — it was only pointed out to her by the opposition this year, during discussions of the zoning plan. At the same time, she places some of the blame on the opposition itself: "We should all have caught this. Including the opposition, which is only questioning it two years later."

The village never initiated the zoning change that would have allowed construction on the forest plot it received — volunteer firefighters rejected the site as unsuitable for a depot, citing its location and slope, among other issues. The mayor, who will not be running in this autumn's elections, stressed that the future of the still-unbuildable plot will be up to the village's next leadership to decide. Kratochvílová herself, however, continues to insist: "This was an incredibly advantageous move. Incredibly. And I stand by that."

Toman's lawyer, Petr Štovíček, emphasised that the businessman acquired the land purely for peace and privacy near his home and has no plans to build anything there — he intends to plant it with forest. According to him, there was nothing irregular about the land deal, and there are no grounds to suspect that Toman influenced the expert's work in any way.

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Around Prague, based on reporting by seznamzpravy.cz