Czech company FVE Petrovice enters insolvency proceedings, owes over half a billion crowns

FVE Petrovice, which owns a large photovoltaic power plant near Borovany in the České Budějovice region, is in insolvency proceedings. The Municipal Court in Prague opened proceedings today at the company’s request. The company aims to reorganize itself. It owes a total of 529 million crowns, with the state among its largest creditors. Ekonomický deník reported this today, saying the company ran into trouble over fraud involving the plant’s completion date, after which it lost its preferential electricity purchase price.

FVE Petrovice, owned by Daniel Exner and Vlastimil Damašek, built a 3,3-megawatt photovoltaic power plant at the end of 2010. Under the rules at the time, completing the solar park by the end of 2010 was a condition for receiving a high electricity purchase price. However, the plant did not begin operating until February 2011. According to the court, an inspection engineer then drew up a false report stating that the plant had started operating earlier.

The court reached a final ruling in the case in 2021. Daniel Exner, the majority owner of the photovoltaic power plant near Borovany, was sentenced to 5,5 years in prison. Marek Klimeš, a representative of the construction company, also received a five-year sentence and a fine of one million crowns. The court sentenced inspection engineer Tomáš Goldmann to three years suspended and banned him from working in the field for seven years.

The company subsequently lost its entitlement to operating subsidies for green electricity. Bawag Group’s leasing company responded by terminating its financing agreement for the plant in January. The Ministry of Industry and Trade also began seeking repayment, according to the newspaper, and is using a bailiff to recover more than 243 million crowns in operating support already paid out. Bawag and the state are the company’s largest creditors.

"In light of the facts described above, the debtor believes that it is now insolvent in the form of cash-flow insolvency and is unable to meet its obligations," the company said in its insolvency petition.

The original purchase price was 16.362 crowns per megawatt-hour (MWh), according to the newspaper. The company must now sell the electricity it generates at the market price of around 550 crowns per MWh.

FVE Petrovice is the latest in a series of renewable energy companies to enter insolvency proceedings recently. In recent months, these have included Solek, Hydropol, Woltair, nanosun and Geen Holding. The best-known case is the collapse of Energetický holding Malina in 2023, which failed to complete installations for thousands of customers.