investors handed their money to him, over $400 million in total from clients such as AIG and Columbia University. The country was considering privatizing its state run oil company SOCAR, and Kožený offered his services. In 1994, Kožený wanted to conduct a similar transaction in Azerbaijan. This scam turned out to be a huge success for Kožený and those working with him, who allegedly stole millions of dollars from investors in his funds. Harvard Funds bought shares in a number of companies, stripped assets and transferred the money abroad to offshore tax havens like the Bahamas. Soon thousands of Czechs were signing over their voucher books to "Harvard", who promised a 1000% rate of return on investment. However mutual funds were founded, most successfully the one started by Kožený, Harvard Capital and Consulting (which has no affiliation with Harvard University).
He is effectively confined to The Bahamas, holding his Irish passport.ĭuring the voucher privatization, Czech state assets were supposed to be handed over to Czech citizens through a system of vouchers, which could then be used to buy shares in companies. The case is still pending.Īs of January 2019, Kožený is still internationally wanted by the Czech and US criminal justice. Assets of the company have been refrozen by the court after the company lost an appeal in 2014. The defendant in the case is a company owned beneficially by Kožený's mother, Jitka Chvatik. An enforcement action based on this judgement has been lodged by the fraud victim in New York, targeting assets frozen by US authorities. In 2012, the judgment was reaffirmed by the High Court in Prague with minor changes. In 2010, Kožený was convicted of fraud by a Czech court and sentenced to 10 years imprisonment and ordered to pay damages equal to hundreds of millions in USD. His defense counsel later published the indictment upon order from Kožený. He asked the prosecution to publish the charges on the Internet, which the state prosecutor has refused to do. Kožený has remained in the Bahamas and has not been attending the trial. In February 2008 a court case against him and his partner Boris Vostrý started at Prague Municipal Court. He was imprisoned after a US extradition request, but that was refused by Bahaman authorities in October 2007. By the media he is often called "the pirate of Prague". An international warrant has been issued for Kožený, who in the early 1990s ran one of the great scams of the post-Communist era. Efforts to bring him to justice stem from both the Czech Republic and the USA. He currently lives in a gated community in the Bahamas. Viktor Kožený is an Irish citizen imprisoned in the Bahamas in 2005 but released in 2007. However, he cannot be located in the Harvard Alumni directory as of 2015.
Viktor Kožený (born 28 June 1963 in Prague, Czechoslovakia) is a fugitive financier.Īccording to Bloomberg News, he graduated from Harvard in 1989 with a bachelor's degree in economics.
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