AVE CZ odpadové hospodářství is a limited liability company which, by its own account, serves more than two million inhabitants and more than 38,000 tradespeople and industrial customers. Stakes in the company are held, among others, by the businessmen Daniel Křetínský and Karel Pražák.[1]
Criminal proceedings
The company faces an indictment under which in 2016 to 2020 it underpaid landfill fees at four landfills in Čáslav, Benátky nad Jizerou, Mšeno and Hořovice. According to state prosecutor Zdeněk Matula, in its reports the company did not declare waste as deposited but as material used to build up the landfill, which is exempt from fees, and it did not collect a fee from waste producers, so it offered lower prices than its competitors. [2] The prosecutor put the damage at 940 million crowns and proposes a fine exceeding one billion crowns. He said he proposes a penalty in the range of 1.2 to 1.3 billion crowns given the gravity of the conduct and the company's income, and does not propose a ban on activity because it would also affect the landfills and the municipalities that rely on them. [2] Representatives of the company rejected the indictment on 21 October 2026 before the regional court in the Central Bohemian Region, saying that they had acted on valid permits and that the interpretation of waste legislation had been disputed.[1][2] The company's defence lawyer Lukáš Duffek said that the procedure which the indictment describes as criminal was expressly permitted in the integrated permits of all four landfills, that the regional office had found during inspections that the procedure complied with their conditions, and that the company had not enriched itself because it had not collected fees from customers. [2]
The Supreme Administrative Court of the Czech Republic rejected the company's motion for suspensive effect of its cassation complaint in a dispute over the permit for operating the landfill in Čáslav, which the Regional Court in Prague annulled in August 2026; in its ruling it stated that suspensive effect could cause serious harm to the environment and that the region's waste management is not endangered by the interruption of the landfill's operation. [3]