The Jaroslav Haščák, co-owner of the Penta Investments, whom the Slovak police detained on Tuesday on corruption charges, has resigned from his executive positions. However, he remains its co-owner. Brit Child is taking over Haščák’s executive functions.
Brit Child joined Penta in November 2010 as a co-owner. Before that, he worked at Deloitte Central Europe as a senior partner. At Penta, he is mainly in charge of investments in Primabance and Fortuna Entertainment Group.
Dozens of police officers also carried out an extensive raid on Penta’s headquarters in Bratislava. Penta confirmed Haščák’s accusations and police intervention and called them unfounded. The case is probably related to the leak of recordings from wiretaps in the as yet unexplored corruption case called Gorilla, which concerns suspicions of bribery of high Slovak politicians and officials by Penta in 2005-2006. The police have not yet commented on the latest developments.
“I want to reassure all our employees, business partners, and customers that our group is stable,” said Child.
Three other co-owners are involved in the executive management of the Penta Group. These are Marek Dospiva, managing partner of Penta Real Estate, Jozef Oravkin, responsible for Privatbank, part of real estate projects in Slovakia, and the group’s investments Slovalco, and Eduard Maták, who is responsible for investments in healthcare.
Penta is a Central European investment group that started in 1994 as a securities dealer. Today, he works in several areas, especially in healthcare, financial services, manufacturing, retail, real estate, and, more recently, in the media. Her best-known investments in the Czech Republic include the Dr. pharmacy network. Max, betting office Fortuna or media house Vltava Labe Media.