The Czech Republic has won CZK2 billion (€77 million) in an arbitration case with the Luxembourg-based company European Media Ventures (EMV) over a now defunct station named TV3.
Quoting Ondrej Jakob, the Czech minister of Finance, HN says that the case establishes a precedence and will affect the way investors look at the Czech Republic.
The EMV case has echoes of the dispute between CME and its former Czech business partner Vladimir Zelezny, in which the Czech state was forced to pay out CZK10 billion in damages to CME for losing TV Nova.
Some time later, CME bought back the station. The arbitration case over TV3 began in 2005, though the dispute started much earlier. It centred round the Radio and TV Council’s rejection of transfer of TV3’s licence to EMV.