A Czech investment and development company says it has resolved a long-running bitter battle with British company ENIC over top Czech league football club Slavia Prague.
Natland Group announced in a statement that it had “ended all legal battles regarding the ownership of SK Slavia Prague.” Natland also said that a newly formed holding company, Viscontia, had bought all ENIC shares and would from now on be the 100 percent shareholder in one of the Czech Republic’s oldest, most famous and most successful clubs.
Significantly, the statement quoted ENIC director Matthew Collecott as saying: “We believe that Slavia will now return to success on the field and stability off it.” ‘Previous events did not allow us to effectively continue with our investment and management of the club.’Collecott also referred to the circumstances in which ENIC alleges it was illegally kicked out of the company by a scam where a group of Czechs increased the capital of the company owning the club without ENIC’s permission.
“Previous events did not allow us to effectively continue with our investment and management of the club. Due to the opportunistic action of the people managing the club, it had very little success in the previous season,” he said.
Fans anger boiled over
Indeed, Slavia finished mid-way down the Czech top league at the end of a tumultuous season during which players were not paid for months and fans’ anger at the management of the club and evasiveness about the real owners boiled over with a pitch invasion by hardcore fans in mid May.
The Czech league champions in 2008–09 ended ninth in the 16-club league with the real threat that the Football Association of the Czech Republic (ČMFS) would relegate Slavia to the third division because of its opaque ownership and backlog of debts.
According to Natland, the new ownership structure means that it will have a 70 percent stake in Viscontia with former Transport Minister Aleš Řebíček (Civic Democrats, ODS) holding 30 percent in the company controlling the club. “We want to show that the shareholder battles over Slavia are a thing of the past, and the goals of us and Aleš Řebíček are to act consensually for the benefit of Slavia Prague,” Natland investment director Josef Voyta said. ‘We want to show that the shareholder battles over Slavia are a thing of the past.’
“Both shareholders took part in solving the dispute with ENIC, whereas the talks had previously been conducted separately. The joining of forces meant that the dispute could be settled quicker. This demonstrates that the interests of Slavia prevailed over the interests of the shareholders,” Řebíček added in the statement.
No details about the purchase of ENIC’s shares or price paid were given, leaving some questions up in the air over the transaction.
Clash over share stakes
Natland Group previously said it had a 50.8 percent stake in Slavia, with Řebíček owning 33 percent and the remaining 16 percent in the hands of ENIC, the owner of Premier League club Tottenham Hotspur. ENIC, however, rejected those figures at the end of May with Collecott insisting to Czech Position that it still owned 99 percent of the club and was still waiting for payment of over Kč 110 million dating from its previous investments in the club.
Řebíček was a Civic Democrat (ODS) minister of transport in the government headed by then-Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek (ODS). Before becoming minister, the billionaire businessman officially cut his ties with regional rail and transport service Viamont — but Řebíček still came under intensive criticism for using his time as minister to benefit businesses to which he was connected.
