Karel Komárek (born 15 March 1969) is a Czech businessman worth $9.4 billion as of March 2024.[1] He is one of the wealthiest Czech citizens and the founder of the investment company KKCG.[2][3]
Karel Komárek | |
---|---|
![]() Komárek in 2023 | |
Born | 15 March 1969 |
Occupation(s) | Businessman, philanthropist |
Years active | 1992–present |
Known for | Founder of KKCG |
Spouse |
Štěpánka Komárková (m. 2015) |
Children | 4 |
Personal life
editKomárek was born in Hodonín, Czech Republic on 15 March 1969. He graduated in engineering and then worked briefly at Sigma Hodonín.[4]
Komárek married Štěpánka Komárková in 2015.[5][6][7] He was previously divorced before marrying Komárková.[6] He has four children, and resides in Verbier, Switzerland.[2][8][9] Komárek is considered an avid cyclist, rower and golfer.[10]
Business career
editIn 1992, he became an entrepreneur for the first time, founding the industrial valves wholesale company M.O.S. Hodonín with a start-up capital of CZK 300,000 borrowed from his father.[11][5] In 1995 Komárek founded the internationally active investment company KKCG.[3] In 1996, his company M.O.S. Hodonín changed its name to MOS Hodonín Morovia Systems and developed into a technology supplier for the mining industry, allowing Komárek to enter the energy business.[4][12] This was followed by the energy production company Moravské naftové doly (now MND Group), which now belongs to Komárek's investment company KKCG.[4]
Komárek is chairman of the board of trustees at the Karel Komárek Family Foundation, alongside his wife Štěpánka.[13]
KKCG
editKKCG's business activities comprise lotteries and gambling, energy, information technology, and investments. Its member companies include Allwyn, MND, ARICOMA Group, KKCG Real Estate Group, Springtide Ventures venture capital fund, and others.[14][15][16] As of 2022, KKCG operated in 33 countries.[5]
In 2012, KKCG became the sole owner of the largest Czech lottery company Sazka, which later served as the cornerstone for the establishment of Europe's gambling conglomerate, the Sazka Group.[14][17] In 2021, Sazka Group's mother company, Sazka Entertainment, rebranded to Allwyn.[18] Allwyn's portfolio includes Camelot UK, Camelot US (operators of the Illinois State Lottery), Opap (Greece and Cyprus), Casag (Austria), Sazka (Czech Republic), and Lottoitalia (Italy).[19]
KKCG has also made investments in information technologies[20] and is active on the real estate market. It has completed various "top rezidence" residential projects in Prague. In June 2021, it finished the Bořislavka Office and Shopping Center in the Prague 6 district.[21][22][23]
In 2023, KKCG opened a methanol factory in West Virginia through the company US Methanol, which was founded by KKCG in 2016.[24][25][26]
Wealth
editIn 2018, Bloomberg estimated Komárek's worth at $3.3 billion.[14][27] In 2019, Forbes ranked Komárek in 715th place among the world's billionaires with estimated worth of $3 billion;[28] in 2022, Forbes ranked him in 502nd place with estimated worth of $5.3 billion.[2] Bloomberg values his net worth at US$8.18 billion as of February 2023.[1]
Criticism
editAccording to Czech media reports, in 2006 Karel Komarek initiated cooperation with the Russian monopoly Gazprom in the oil and gas sector in exchange for oil production in Russia.[29] A representative office of Karel Komarek's company MND was opened in Moscow.[30] Komarek lobbied for the construction of a gas storage facility to store Russian gas in the Czech Republic, bypassing Ukraine's gas transportation system.[31] The cooperation between Komarek's MND and Russia's Gazprom officially began in 2013, when a joint venture Moravia Gas Storage a.s. (MSG) was established, in which Gazprom owned 50+% of the shares and Komarek's Czech MND held a smaller share.[32] MSG has built one of the largest gas storage facilities in the Czech Republic with a gas volume of 448 million cubic meters or 12% of the country's total reserves.[33] The board of directors of Moravia Gas Storage a.s. includes Alexander Medvedev, deputy chairman of Gazprom, as well as other Russian managers of the Russian monopoly, many of whom have been identified by Russian opposition media as former or current employees of Russian special services.[34][35]
After the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Czech-Russian joint venture was fully operational for more than a year, until the introduction of the 10th EU sanctions package, which at the end of February 2023 explicitly banned Russians from owning gas transportation facilities in the EU. Only after that, Gazprom's share was eroded,[36] but by June 2024, the Russian giant owned more than 2.6% of the Czech storage facility. At the same time, according to the Czech state register, Russian management remained on the board of directors of Moravia Gas Storage a.s. until March 2024.[37]
It took almost two years of pressure from the UK authorities, where Komarek's company applied for a national lottery, to completely formally break off cooperation with Gazprom.[38] The British media accused Czech businessman Karel Komarek of delaying the process of terminating cooperation with Gazprom.[39] Ian Duncan, a member of the British Parliament, said that “this issue (Karel Komarek's connection to Gazprom) has taken so long and is a matter of deep concern that it has been so difficult to simply obtain transparent information about one of the largest contracts in the UK public sector”.[40] The British media also found out that Russia's VTB Bank and Sberbank were part of a consortium that lent €640 million to Komarek's SAZKA lottery company in 2020.[41] In turn, Radio Liberty noted in its own investigation that Karel Komarek owes the success of his business to the Russians.[42]
Czech media reported that in 2011, Karel Komarek became the owner of the Samara oil terminal in the city of Oktyabrsk in Russia.[43] The design capacity of the complex for receiving, storing and loading oil is up to 5 million tons per year. According to an official statement by MND, the terminal was allegedly sold in 2022 to the asset management, but the deal was not publicly communicated, and MND did not disclose the amount of the transaction or the name of the new owner. This led to rumors that the deal was fictitious.[44]
In parallel with the operation of the terminal in Russia, Karel Komarek has been doing business in Ukraine since the late 2000s, where his partners have been the Kozitsky family of local entrepreneurs and officials - his father Zynoviy, as the beneficiary of Horizons LLC, and his son, the head of the Lviv Regional Military-Civilian Administration Maksym Kozytskyi.[45] Ukrainian state registers confirm that Horizons LLC is jointly owned by Zynoviy Kozytskyi and Karel Komarek. The company's activities have been accompanied by scandals due to Karel Komarek's ties to Russian Gazprom. In 2018, the Security Service of Ukraine and the State Financial Monitoring Service of Ukraine demanded that Horizons be excluded from the auction for the sale of special permits for subsoil use because the Russian Samara terminal, owned by Karel Komarek's company, supplied oil products to Ukrainian territories controlled by Russia, including the self-proclaimed LPR and DPR.
Philanthropy
editKomárek founded the Karel Komárek Family Foundation, which supports the Dvořák Prague International Music Festival,[46] which he co-founded in 2008,[47] and the Proměny Foundation. The Proměny Foundation focuses on the development of public space in the Czech Republic and in particular the reconstruction of parks and school gardens. The Foundation participated, among other things, in the reconstruction of the Park Střed in Most.[48]
In 2020, the Karel Komárek Family Foundation launched a project in which it donated instruments to Czech schools and purchased 11 pianos worth 200,000 euros from the Czech manufacturer Petrof to be donated.[49] At the same time he started a public collection of instruments for 45 other schools.[50][51] In 2023, the second fundraising campaign was launched to procure 21 instruments worth CZK 10.3 million, half of which will be raised by the KKFF.[52] In August 2021, it donated CZK 150 million to the reconstruction of Hodonín after the town was devastated by a tornado in June 2021.[53][54][55]
The Karel Komárek Family Foundation also supported the Gardens of Peace project in France in 2022, that commemorates the soldiers who died in the First World War.[56]
Komárek has received the Gold Medal in the Arts from the Kennedy Center International Committee on the Arts for his achievements in the field of art.[3] He and his wife have also supported the construction of the "Reach center" building in the Kennedy Center in 2019.[57][58][59]
In 2022, Komárek launched a project called "More than Equal" in Silverstone. Its aim is to find, train, and support the first female Formula One World Champion. Co-founder of the project is David Coulthard. "More than Equal" has since partnered with Motorsport Network to deliver a global survey on the state of motorsport.[60][61][62]
References
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- ^ a b c Radu, Sintia (11 September 2019). "A Billionaire's advice: Embrace the arts". U.S. News & World Report. Retrieved 8 May 2023.
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- ^ Wer steht hinter der Sazka Group? In: Österreichischer Rundfunk. 15. December 2019.
- ^ "Karel Komárek Family Foundation - About the Foundation". Karel Komárek Family Foundation - Every potential deserves a chance to be developed. Retrieved 5 May 2023.
- ^ a b c Alexander, Sophie (30 October 2018). "The Billionaire Who Took a Bet on Lotteries to Live the Dream". Bloomberg.
- ^ Mares, Michael. "Dvorak And Methanol. Odd Combo That Makes Perfect Sense for Czech Billionaire". Forbes. Retrieved 1 August 2019.
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