By Frank Parlato
A New Test for BaFin
Mark Branson took charge of Germany’s financial regulator in 2021. He arrived after the Wirecard collapse, with €1.9 billion missing, BaFin employees trading the company’s stock, and the agency’s conduct under investigation.
He promised reforms. He said the same failures would not happen again.
At the same time, Czech businessman Radovan Vítek was adding to his real-estate holdings in Germany. His company, CPI Property Group, was valued at more than €20 billion and owns about 1 million square meters of commercial property in Berlin. CPI is listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and falls under BaFin’s oversight.
Luxembourg regulators had earlier found that Vítek acquired certain assets in violation of takeover and transparency laws. This finding predated Branson’s arrival.
If Branson wants a test case in complex cross-border fraud, he could start with the man whose methods make Wirecard look amateur.
How the Scheme Began: The ORCO Takeover
Jean-François Ott founded ORCO Property Group in 1991. It was once a multibillion-euro real-estate giant in Central Europe, developing major projects across several countries, before the real estate market collapsed in 2009–2010.
Ott’s stake in his company was erased, leaving him nominally in charge of a company he no longer owned. By 2012, ORCO restructuring converted its bonds into equity, and new shareholders controlled the company. Ott remained as chairman, but he owned only about one percent of the company he had founded.
Kingstown Capital, based in Manhattan, which managed over a billion in pension money; Alchemy Special Opportunities, based in London, handling retirement and endowment capital; and three U.S. firms—Capstone Equities, Tricadia Capital, and J.P. Morgan owned the most significant piece of Orco. They kept ORCO alive with loans.
Radovan Vítek stepped in in 2012. He told Ott that he could keep the CEO job and regain his fortune.
In September 2012, Ott introduced Vítek to Rothschild & Co. Within days, Rothschild was helping Vítek buy ORCO stock quietly. Vítek wanted control, and he wanted it secret for now. By October, two Cyprus entities, Gamala and Crestline, controlled just over twenty percent. ORCO issued the press release, but it left out who owned the two companies.
In December 2012, Vítek signed commission agreements with J&T Banka, turning the bank into his secret agent for buying up Endurance Fund shares—the crown jewels of ORCO’s real estate portfolio. At the same time, he reportedly released misleading stories that the Endurance Fund was failing. Bloomberg and Patria amplified the rumors.
Deutsche Pfandbriefbank panicked, called in loans, and shut off new financing. The fund slipped into distress, not because the assets were weak, but because Vítek engineered the crisis to strip them out at bargain prices while J&T Banka acquired over 30% of the Endurance Office Fund at depressed prices. In a short time, J&T—operating as Vítek’s concealed instrument—controlled nearly three-quarters of the fund. Only three Danish investors, aware of the assets’ actual value, resisted the pressure to sell.
Securing Control Through Fronts and Shells
January 10–11, 2013 — The Stationway Purchase
Ott registered a company, Stationway, which acquired more than nine million ORCO shares for €26.8 million.
Ott did not negotiate the purchase, nor did he finance it; the entire operation was arranged by Vítek, using the same brokers as his own trades, with J&T Banka providing an overdraft to Ott, who had never been their client.
The purchases were timed just before the date on which voting rights would be fixed, and under their agreement, Vitek would direct how Ott was to vote at the board meeting. Ott told Kingstown that he had funded the purchase, controlled the votes, and acted to defend ORCO. All of it was untrue. The transaction served one purpose: to strengthen Vítek’s grip, with Ott functioning as his front.
At the same time, another Cyprus company—LCE Company Limited—began buying ORCO stock. On paper, it belonged to a Czech dentist, René Foltán, but he was also a shill for Vítek. LCE bought 2.21%, stopping just below the disclosure line. With Stationway’s shares and nearly 30% held through his declared companies, Vítek quietly crossed the legal threshold (33.33 percent) that, under applicable takeover rules, should have forced him to offer every minority shareholder a fair buyout. He never did. Instead, he kept his ownership hidden.
January 25–29, 2013: The Board Approval Fraud
Before Kingstown and Alchemy could take their board seats on February 4, Vítek told Ott to push through the sale of ORCO’s Endurance stakes. At the January 25 board meeting, Ott lined up the votes.
Four days later, the board approved the sale at the same cut-rate prices J&T Banka had been paying to private sellers spooked by the fake news. ORCO accepted the lowest price available—because that was the price Vítek wanted.
The transaction settled on February 4, 2013—the same day the new board members were elected. This ensured Kingstown’s representative could not stop it.
February 25, 2013: The London Board Meeting
Three weeks after joining the board, Kingstown requested answers regarding the Endurance sale. ORCO called a meeting in London, and Kingstown’s representative flew in from Manhattan. Vítek appeared in person.
When the question came—Who bought ORCO’s Endurance stake?—Ott said J&T Banka was an “arm’s-length, third-party purchaser.” It wasn’t. They had purchased the stake for Vitek.
At that same meeting, Vítek killed Kingstown’s proposal to recapitalize the company. The board—under Vitek’s influence—approved selling another Endurance asset to J&T Banka for €1.2 million. Vítek voted for the sale, never disclosing his conflict of interest: that the bank was acting for him.
Afterward, ORCO circulated minutes claiming all directors had disclosed their conflicts under Luxembourg law. Ott and Vítek both certified that they had none. It was a lie.
April 25, 2013: The Rothschild Cover-Up
In April 2013, ORCO requested a strategic review from Rothschild. The board did not know that Rothschild was advising Vítek on consolidating his holdings, including the Endurance assets J&T Banka had acquired on his behalf.
A draft presentation sent to Ott on April 25 acknowledged the Vitek connection; in the version provided to the board on May 15, Ott removed the name Vitek.
He calculated that ORCO Germany was worth nearly €300 million more than reported—and he intended to obtain it. Vítek next turned his attention to ORCO Germany.
On June 3, 2013, a Cyprus entity named Kamoro acquired an 8.65% stake in ORCO Germany. It was registered to Lumir Safránek, a private investigator with no financial means to make such a purchase and longstanding ties to Vítek’s legal adviser. The funds came from J&T Banka.
On June 19, the Danish group that still owned 27 percent of the Endurance fund submitted a €52 million bid for the Endurance Office assets. At the meeting, a company called Sidoti offered a marginally higher bid of €52.53 million—an offer Ott knew about but had not disclosed in advance. No representative of Sidoti attended the board meeting.
When the Danish funds attempted to raise their bid to €52.75 million, the Advisory Board—dominated by entities aligned with Vítek—ruled that it would be “improper” to consider a higher offer without Sidoti present. They rejected any postponement and approved the sale to Sidoti. The properties were worth, by contemporaneous valuations, an estimated €330 million. Sidoti, owned by Vítek’s mother, paid $62 million.
August 29, 2013: Another Lie
ORCO held a board meeting in Prague on August 29, 2013. When Alchemy’s board member asked who owned Sidoti, Vítek’s proxy, Jiri Dedera, lied and said Vítek did not control it. By the end of 2013, the lie was fully exposed: Sidoti (owned by Vítek’s mother) had flipped the assets to Vítek’s own company, Czech Property Investments, for a €13 million profit.”
Eliminating Oversight
November 27–29, 2013: The Ambush
Vítek sought to acquire control of ORCO Germany.
He proposed issuing 114.6 million new shares to Tandis, a company secretly owned by his mother. For €53.8 million, Tandis would receive a 33.25% stake in ORCO Germany. By Vítek’s internal assessment, the value exceeded €200 million.
Ott ensured that the board would not scrutinize the matter. He omitted the proposed issuance from the November 27 meeting agenda. When questions were raised, the meeting was adjourned.
On November 29, Ott announced that the sole item for consideration was the issuance to Tandis. Kingstown and Alchemy objected and requested a postponement. Ott denied the request. They declined to attend, attempting to prevent a quorum, but the meeting proceeded.
Vítek abstained as an interested party. Ott and three others voted in favor. Only one board member opposed. Crucially, one member conditioned his vote on the issuance being open to all shareholders—a safeguard meant to prevent the dilution Vítek intended.
In the minutes drafted afterward, those conditions disappeared. Ott produced a record of the minutes that did not mention the condition of all shareholders having a chance to buy the shares. This account was then sent to Kingstown’s representative in Manhattan.
January 6, 2014: The Kill Shot
The general meeting of January 6, 2014, marked the point at which the pretense of shared governance gave way to open control. Vítek voted to remove the board representatives of Kingstown and Alchemy. Three Cyprus companies—LCE, Levos, and Egnaro—rose in support. Each had acquired its holdings in increments designed to remain below the 2.5% disclosure threshold.
Their nominal owners—a dentist and two former J&T Finance Group officials—were clients of J&T Banka. Their function was to provide the appearance of shareholder support for a decision that had already been predetermined.
The resolution passed, and a new five-member board was elected: Vítek, Ott, and three others under Vítek’s control.
March 3, 2014: Ott’s “Purchase”
Only months earlier, Ott had assured the board he would not use Stationway for such a purchase.
On March 3, 2014, ORCO Germany issued 76 million new shares, selling them to Ott’s company, Stationway, for €36 million, thereby losing its majority stake in the subsidiary.
Had he disclosed his true intentions, he would have been conflicted and barred from voting on the November 29 resolution that enabled the issuance. Without his vote, the resolution would have failed.
Ott lacked the resources to fund the acquisition. Vítek arranged the financing through J&T Banka. On December 20, 2013, the bank’s Slovak branch made a €17.5 million payment toward Stationway’s loan, not Ott. The transaction confirmed Ott was not acting independently, but as an instrument of Vítek’s control.
March 27, 2014: The Firing and Payoff
On March 27, 2014, Ott was fired. He asserted that ORCO owed him a substantial severance payment. At Vítek’s direction, the company paid him €16 million.
In April, Kingstown—having lost its representative on the board and watching the share price sink under Vítek’s public threats of liquidation—sold its position at a loss of roughly €70 million, approximately ninety-four percent of its investment.
€70 million loss was distributed across thousands of beneficiaries as a few dollars to a few hundred each—small enough that no individual would notice a missing check, but collectively representing real wealth transferred from public retirement systems to Vítek’s private empire.
Ott, by contrast, benefited. In June, he sold his remaining shares to Vítek for a profit of €2.28 million.
During the same period, with financing from J&T Banka, an entity named Aspley—nominally owned by Pavel Spanko, another Vitek shill—acquired more than 100 million ORCO Germany shares from ORCO for €55.5 million.
By mid-2014, Vítek had accumulated more than ninety percent of ORCO Germany, having paid only a fraction of the value of its assets.
In August 2014, ORCO Germany was renamed CPI Property Group.
November 2014: The Big Share Issuance
In November 2014, ORCO’s board—now fully controlled by Vítek—authorized a massive capital increase. Two shell companies each subscribed to 100 million new shares at €0.296 per share:
• Fetumar Development Limited, owned by Jan Gerner, paid €29.6 million.
• Aspley Ventures Limited, owned by Pavel Spanko, paid €29.6 million.
Together, they acquired a 60% stake in ORCO.
May 2016: The Final Capital Raise
In May 2016, ORCO conducted another capital raise. Fetumar, Aspley, and a third company Jagapa (owned by Julius Strapek of J&T Banka), each subscribed to additional shares.
After this issuance, Fetumar, Aspley, and Jagapa each held 30.43% of ORCO, for a combined 91.29%.
June 8, 2016: The Unwind
On June 8, 2016, Nukasso Limited, a subsidiary of CPI Property Group, acquired Fetumar, Aspley, and Jagapa for €188.098 million at €0.28 per share.
The next day, June 9, the money was paid back to Vítek through a series of transactions with companies associated with Vítek and his associates. In two days, Vítek engaged in a transaction in which he paid for shares and then was refunded the money.
On June 8, Nukasso also acquired the ORCO shares held by the three Cyprus companies that had voted Kingstown off the board: LCE, Levos, and Egnaro, at the same €0.28 per share.
Also on June 8, Vítek—through CPI Property Group—acquired Ott’s Stationway ORCO shares at the same €0.28 per share. Ott had bought them at €2.95 in January 2013.
Combined with shares Nukasso already held, Vítek now held 97.31% of ORCO through CPI Property Group. He had stripped the company of its best assets and wound up with the remaining for pennies on the dollar.
What Regulators Eventually Discovered
January 19, 2017: Regulatory Findings
On January 19, 2017, Luxembourg’s financial regulator issued a confidential report finding that, from 2012 to 2016, Radovan Vítek, Jean-François Ott, and a network of shell companies and shills under Vítek’s control had secretly acted together to take control of ORCO in violation of takeover and transparency laws.
Because of these findings, the regulator suspended trading in ORCO shares on the Luxembourg stock exchange, imposed fines on Vítek, and the Warsaw Stock Exchange also suspended trading in ORCO shares.
The stocks were worthless, and the fine was a tiny fraction of what Vitek had plundered.
Endurance assets worth €330 million sold for €52 million, ORCO Germany undervalued by hundreds of millions, and minority shareholders denied the mandatory buyout—the total damage to pensions and institutions rises to as much as a billion.
Vítek captured the profit by dismantling ORCO rather than rebuilding it, depriving long-term investors of billions in future appreciation. His real estate empire today sits atop the value extracted from ORCO that would have accrued to long‑term investors had it not been sabotaged.
The German Question
Mark Branson inherited Wirecard’s aftermath and promised German investors they would be protected. Yet BaFin’s courts ruled the regulator owes investors nothing—no duty, no liability, no consequences for catastrophic failure.
Wirecard revealed that a DAX listing, Big Four audits, and BaFin supervision meant nothing when fraud was systemic, and regulators were complicit.
Radovan Vítek operates on an even larger scale under Branson’s watch: a €20 billion empire built on documented violations of takeover law, shell companies, falsified board minutes, and hundreds of millions stripped from pension funds.
CPI Property Group trades on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. Its operations fall within BaFin’s jurisdiction. And if Branson truly means to prevent another Wirecard, here stands his opportunity—a billionaire whose methods Luxembourg’s regulator exposed, whose victims—teachers, nurses, pension funds—mirror those Wirecard destroyed, whose corporate structure seems to feature the kind of complexity and opacity that enabled Germany’s greatest financial scandal.
The question is not whether Vítek represents the risk Branson swore to eliminate. The question is whether Branson’s promise of BaFin’s reform was just another performance for a public that’s learned not to trust it.
