Prague has won a dispute over the Holešovice market, Delta Center has to pay a quarter of a billion
The capital won a long-running dispute with the tenant of Holešovice Market, Delta Center. She resigned in 2011 due to non-payment of rent. However, the company refused to acknowledge the resignation, claiming that the rent paid for the maintenance of the complex. “The company duly paid the rent for the performed credits, therefore we consider the termination from 2011 to be invalid,” said Delta Kol’s lawyer Petr Kolář.
However, the court has now confirmed that the termination is valid and Delta Center must pay 246 million of the rent due for the years 2010 to 2012. “The method of offsetting receivables is absolutely invalid. court for Prague 7 Miroslava Trebatická.
In addition, the city can receive more than 160 million from the landlords of the premises, who send the rent to the court for custody of the money.
1994 competition
In 1994, Delta Center won a public tender to rent a market. In it, she undertook to pay 109 million crowns a year. Part of the rent – up to 840 million – could then be paid by investing in the complex. In 2010, however, the company stopped paying and claimed that the rent was paid in the form of credits through the investments it made in the market. And the expert company RSM Tacoma subsequently proved it to her.
But according to the city, the investment was insufficient and unprovable. Delta Center allegedly counted vague invoices, and it is not at all possible to verify that these investments ended up in the market. And other invoices had nothing to do with investments in the area. “For example, they counted the trips of their employees, the work of an advertising agency, orientation and information boards or even a garbage can in Brandýs,” pointed out the lawyer of the municipality Pavla Boučková.
“I do not understand how an expert opinion could have been issued on the basis of such documents, which have the character of internal invoices, when I do not even agree with the amounts on the documents and in the initial documents,” Boučková added.
You must clean the premises within 30 days
The court therefore had its own opinion – but I can say that the experts said that on the basis of the documents provided by Delta Center, they are not able to prepare them.
Photo: Lukáš Bíba
“They stated that on the basis of the documents they could not assess that the credits were carried out properly. The invoices did not have the specified requirements, they were indeterminate,” said Judge Miroslava Trebatická, who gave the city the truth. Delta must also vacate the premises it uses in the market within thirty days of the judgment becoming final.
This is not the first time they have dealt with a market dispute in court. The first verdict was issued in 2013, when the predecessor of Trebatická, Karel Bogner, agreed with Delta Company that the lease was valid.
However, this verdict was annulled by the Municipal Court in Prague as unreviewable. And he ordered Judge Bogner to hear the case again and, in particular, to find out if Delta Center had really invested as much in the market as it claims. Then he froze, and only after Bogner resigned as judge in the second half of last year did her case be taken over by Trebatická, who decided.
Congested court and millions in custody
At the same time, it is possible that the dispute will not end and the company will appeal to the Municipal Court in Prague. Whether she is considering this, her lawyer declined to say, saying she did not have the client’s authority.
In addition, the market dispute will help unblock the District Court for Prague 7, which is almost paralyzing disputes related to the market. In addition to this dispute, it also handles several thousand related cases.
Although the market was taken over by Solid, a company hired by the city in 2013, Delta Center further claimed that it was an eligible tenant and was entitled to sublet the space to other subtenants. Therefore, some of them put rent in court custody due to uncertainty. According to the director of the property department, Jan Rak, it should be 164 million crowns. There are also disputes in court over whether subleases apply.
“There are about a thousand of these lawsuits in court, another two thousand files are related to individual custody,” confirmed the chairman of the court Roman Podlešák. According to Trebatska, the disputes around Holešovice Market Square account for 62 percent of the court’s agenda.
“So today, some tenants have a contract with the city, part with Delta Center, which the city does not recognize, part is paid by the city, part is not held in court, some is not paid at all, some is having fun with the city, some is not having fun with the city. Nobody plans. Nobody develops, “said Deputy Mayor for Finance Pavel Vyhnánek, who acknowledges the outcome of the trial.
According to Vyhnánek, Israeli investors are behind Delta Center. “They told us that they are a very responsible group of people who are based on their reputation. Therefore, I believe that they will not owe the capital a quarter of a billion,” says Vyhnánek.