Chasing The Prodigal Son

Will the man accused of being one of Eastern Europe's most successful scamsters ever have his day in court? Czech prosecutors asked a Prague court to issue an international warrant for the arrest of Viktor Kozeny, 40, who lives in the Bahamas and has already been indicted in the U.S. for grand larceny and criminal possession of stolen property. The Manhattan District Attorney's Office accused him of pocketing $182 million from a group of American investors in an Azerbaijani privatization scheme that never took place. The Czechs want him in connection with separate allegations that he defrauded 250,000 small investors of up to $370 million. A Czech émigré with a degree in economics from Harvard University, Kozeny made a fortune in the 1990s, handling high-risk investments in mass privatization schemes in the emerging markets of the former eastern bloc. He has always maintained his innocence. "I am a straight shooter," he told the Czech daily Mlada fronta Dnes last November. "I sleep well and don't think that I did anything wrong." But Jaromír Jindrich, the lead Czech prosecutor in the case, says Kozeny took advantage of the "naiveté and inexperience" of the Czech people after the fall of communism. "At that time anybody or anything coming from the West was looked up to without question." The Czech Republic has no extradition treaty with the Bahamas, but the U.S. does.

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