CHINA-CZECH REPUBLIC: CHINA'S INFLUENCE BUYING OPERATIONS IN CZECH REPUBLIC

The Czech Republic’s richest man Petr Kellner, owner of a domestic loans company 'Home Credit' is reported to be at the centre of a suspected foreign influence campaign by the Chinese government after one of his businesses financed an attempt to boost China’s image in the central European country. Home Credit has lent an estimated £10bn to the PR firm, C&B Reputation Management to place articles in the local media giving a more positive picture of a country widely associated with political repression and human rights abuses. Home Credit also funded Sinoskop, a newly formed thinktank – headed by a translator for the Czech Republic’s pro-Chinese president, Miloš Zeman – to counteract the more sceptical line taken by a longer-established China-watching body, Sinopsis, linked with Prague’s Charles University. According to analysts, the Czech Republic has been more open to Chinese influence than most other European countries, a situation that has coincided with the burgeoning commercial relationship between China and Kellner’s sprawling PPF group, which boasts an estimated £40bn in assets, including Home Credit. PPF began accumulating its vast wealth in the mass privatisation of state assets that followed the fall of communism in the former Czechoslovakia in 1989.





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