Czech intelligence services worked to discredit restitution claims, newspaper reports

Lidove noviny reported on Monday that police formed a special intelligence unit under the last Social Democrat government, which was assigned to look for evidence that would cast doubt on the restitution claims of noble families. According to the daily, the unit was supposed to look for documents abroad that would challenge some claims for the return of properties worth billions of crowns, which were confiscated from noble families at the end of the Second World War.

The paper writes that Czech agents were to find documents in German and Austrian archives proving that the claimants were not born with the Czech citizenship necessary to entitle them to their property. It is believed that one of the people targeted by the unit was Franz Ulrich Kinsky, who had property worth an estimated 40 billion crowns (1.9 billion US dollars) confiscated by the Czechoslovak State in 1945 when he was just nine years old.