{"id":58358,"date":"2021-03-29T16:23:04","date_gmt":"2021-03-29T20:23:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=58358"},"modified":"2021-03-29T16:23:04","modified_gmt":"2021-03-29T20:23:04","slug":"why-was-the-richest-billionaire-in-the-czech-republic-killed-in-an-helicopter-crash-in-alaska","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=58358","title":{"rendered":"Why was the richest billionaire in the Czech Republic killed in an helicopter crash in Alaska?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Czech billionaire Petr Kellner is among five killed in Alaska crash<\/h1>\n

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GETTY IMAGES
image captionThe helicopter came down near Knik Glacier<\/p><\/div>\n

BBC<\/p>\n

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The Czech Republic’s richest man, investment tycoon Petr Kellner, has died along with four others in a helicopter crash during a heli-skiing trip in Alaska.<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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One person survived the crash near a glacier and is now in hospital.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Kellner, 56, founded the\u00a0PPF investment group<\/a>, which is reported to have global assets worth \u20ac44bn (\u00a338bn; $52bn).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Kellner’s fortune is put at $17.5bn by Forbes. The cause of Saturday’s crash, near Knik Glacier, is not clear.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Kellner, the majority shareholder in PPF, is survived by his wife and four children.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The helicopter came down about 100km (62 miles) from Anchorage in Alaska.<\/p>\n

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EPA
image captionPetr Kellner pictured in May 2019<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The four other victims have been named as: a fellow Czech – Benjamin Larochaix, 50; Gregory Harms, 52, of Colorado; and two Alaskans – Sean McMannany, 38, and the pilot, Zachary Russel, 33.<\/p>\n

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Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis, himself a billionaire, described the crash in the US as “an incredible tragedy”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In the Czech post-communist era Kellner’s first business venture was selling office supplies.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The BBC’s Rob Cameron in Prague reports that Kellner was a secretive man who made his fortune in the 1990s by launching an investment fund with which he bought a controlling stake in the country’s largest insurance company.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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PPF then expanded into telecoms, media and engineering. Last October it bought a major European broadcast network, Central European Media Enterprises, for $1.1bn, prompting fears in the Czech Republic that the network might lose independence.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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PPF also owns Home Credit, a consumer loan firm which is very active in China.<\/p>\n

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\nhttps:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/world-europe-56567002<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Czech billionaire Petr Kellner is among five killed in Alaska crash<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58358\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}