Czech Billionaire’s Property Firm Seeks End to Fund’s Suit
Czech Billionaire’s Property Firm Seeks End to Fund’s RICO Suit
(Bloomberg) -- Czech property billionaire Radovan Vitek’s company said the New York hedge fund accusing him of a $1 billion fraud is wrongfully attempting to apply U.S. racketeering law to businesses that operate overseas.
Vitek’s CPI Property Group, the largest commercial property landlord in Berlin, said Tuesday in a New York court filing that a lawsuit by Kingstown Capital Management should be tossed out because it was filed too late and overlaps with claims already made in a case pending in Luxembourg since 2015.
“All of the defendants, and the vast majority of the evidence, is located in Europe, where there are alternative adequate forums, including Luxembourg and the Czech Republic,” CPI Property said in the filing.
“Suffice it to say that all of the defendants’ arguments are procedural, and none go to the merits of my clients’ claims that they were defrauded by Radovan Vitek and his co-conspirators,” Kingstown’s New York-based lawyer, Matthew L. Schwartz, said in an email. “We look forward to proving those claims at trial.”
Vitek, who ousted Kingstown’s representatives from the board of a related company in 2014, has repeatedly denied the allegations and claims the lawsuit was filed by “disgruntled investors“ who didn’t hold a stake in the company at the time of the alleged violations.
In June, a Luxembourg court became the first to weigh in by dismissing Kingstown’s 2015 claim against CPI, though it wasn’t a total victory. Claims remained against Vitek personally, as well as another key CPI entity and five other current and former board members.
To contact the reporters on this story: Erik Larson in New York at elarson4@bloomberg.net;Hugo Miller in Geneva at hugomiller@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: David Glovin at dglovin@bloomberg.net, Steve Stroth
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