Kožený sentenced to ten years in absentia

A Prague court has sentenced the fugitive Czech businessman Viktor Kožený to ten years in prison in absentia for fraudulent practices which damaged the Harvard Funds company he set up ahead of the post-1989 privatization process. Money was siphoned from the company’s accounts and used for dubious investment deals, damaging shareholders in the Czech Republic to the tune of billions of crowns. Mr. Kožený is currently living in the Bahamas and was sentenced in absentia. Efforts to get him extradited to the Czech Republic have so far failed.