The Municipal Court in Prague has initiated insolvency proceedings with the company Centralni Vyberova Rizeni(CVŘ), according to information published in the insolvency register. The company of the entrepreneur Vlastimil Zimák states in the insolvency petition that it registers 82 creditors with receivables for almost 117 million crowns. The court invites other creditors to register their claims. CVŘ was written about in connection with unfair practices in the doorstep sale of energy. According to an earlier statement by Zimák, there is a competitive struggle behind the complaints.
CVŘ states in the insolvency petition that it is not able to meet its financial obligations in the long run. It claims that it does not have any intangible assets and its only tangible assets are office equipment with an estimated value of CZK 31,000. He has CZK 154,000 in cash on its accounts. It is therefore evident that it does not have sufficient funds even for the partial satisfaction of creditors.
CVŘ has had financial problems for a long time. She faced insolvency as early as 2020. From 16 December 2020, she was in an extraordinary moratorium, which was subsequently extended and ended on 16 June 2021. Central Tenders has not published her income statements or annual reports for a long time.
According to previously published information, the company systematically focuses primarily on pensioners and single people. More than a year ago, the Czech Trade Inspection Authority (CTIA) fined it CZK 900,000, among other things, for its doorstep sellers trying to deceive consumers by pretending to be representatives of the CTIA or CEZ.
Complaints about the company are registered by the inspectorate this year as well. “We record about two dozen consumer complaints at CVŘ this year. A total of three inspections of CVŘ are underway, another more than a dozen inspections have already been closed and are now in the phase of the administrative proceedings,” CTI spokesman Jiří Fröhlich said in April. According to Zimák, the case for which CVŘ was fined was suspicious because the saleswoman was completely against the company’s principles and training. At that time, Zimák further stated that the very concept of energy smugglers is a product of the PR campaign of large energy suppliers, whose profits have been reduced by market liberalization.