František Kajgr

“I learned from one of our employees that Vařeka, a big businessman in Příbram that everyone had known and who had built the Ravak factory, bought up half of Příbram, various factories and a health center, was making big money. I also learned that he spent his money on start-ups and that he helped new businesses from around Příbram – he would always participate with some amount of money and people would either pay him back or he would get a certain share in the business. So I thought of asking him whether he would help us with this. Because we had had bank overdrafts for our stockpile. For every summer and winter we needed to buy goods for forty or fifty million crowns, so that’s how we got it. So, I went to him and asked whether he could help us, that we needed some resources to improve the garages and to build a crushing line for used tires. And he said: ‘Okay, I don’t have a problem with that, I knew your father, I used to get tires from him, and I know you’re a rich family and I have no problem with that whatsoever. We’ll do what you want.’ But mainly he got interested in it, he said: ‘You know, I don’t really care about the sales, the tires, the garages. I’m interested in the production. I’m really interested in that. Find out more about that and if you want, I’ll go for it.’”

“Grandpa’s name was Jan Kajgr, in 1935 he founded a tire shop in Dobříš and he built the shop right next to his family house, he built them simultaneously. Since then he had had a business license. He had worked pretty much continuously ever since that, even during the Communist era. The paradox is that he started in 1935, worked until the war, then the fascists let him work, then communists came in 1948 and he couldn’t run a business anymore, but because the public utilities needed this kind of a service in Dobříš, they actually let him have his shop, although they did take it away but grandpa could still work there as a worker and grandma was his boss. And so it was under the municipal service. But everyone still came to Kajgr because after all those years he had run the business, people around got used to coming to the Kajgr who did tires.”

“I have this from stories of my mother, aunt and grandma, his wife, who was widowed. It was this incredible story of our grandpa who kept in touch with all these people, these farmers, who supplied him and with whom they met as friends. It wasn’t any subversive or ani-state group, nothing like that, they just met in pubs as friends. But then they realized the cops, the secret agents had been after them, spying on them. So they gave up the pubs and started going for strolls. So, they would go on strolls to the castle gardens or to the woods around there. And they would go on walks there. But someone made them an anti-state group as they had probably wanted to get rid of my grandfather. And this thing happened in the summer, grandpa was fifty-four and he was never sick. He was perfectly healthy. No one was home and he only got to tell his wife when she came back from a swim with their daughters. They came back home and he had already been feeling very sick. They didn’t know why and asked him what was going on. He said that a lady had stopped by because there had been a storm or a shower coming, so she had asked for shelter. He took her in, the rain shower passed, and she offered him some apples. He took some and ate one of them. He didn’t eat anything else. He didn’t eat anything else, he didn’t have dinner, he was sick, was taken to the hospital and was dead the next day.” – “And you think the apple was poisoned?” – “Of course, I’m a hundred percent sure.”

“I basically gave him all the information, all the details, contacts, everything. I even gave him an authorization, he actually had the line prepared, he had everything and he just needed to cut me out so that I wasn’t there anymore. And he did it in such a way that during that spring, despite me being the CEO and the managing director, he kept pressuring me all the time: ‘Give me the money, I don’t care that the stock will be missing in the books, just sell it out, give it to me somehow.’ He simply tried to make me do a fraud or a criminal offense to get me. I said: ‘No way. I’m not going to play a big man here. No way.’ And in the meantime, we agreed that on July 1st there would be another general meeting because by law there were bearer shares. These amendments to the law meant that these things had to be done by July 1st. So I announced an ordinary general meeting and we were ready to rearrange the matrimonial property regime, that we would maybe create another company for the production. That’s what we were expecting. But on June 5, 2014 Vařeka called me and my son to come to his office. We came there and he had all these helpers of his with him and he said: ‘An extraordinary general meeting was held yesterday, I proved myself as holding 100 % share, the whole company is mine, I took over.’ They kicked me out of the company. ‘And I’m telling you that you’ll end up homeless. I’ll arrange for auctions, distraints, insolvency, you’ll have nothing. You’ll be the last homeless person in Příbram. And now you can go!’”