Czech Richest Man Amongst 5 Killed In Alaska Helicopter Crash (PHOTO)

An helicopter crash in Alaska has claimed the life of Petr Kellner, the Czech Republic’s wealthiest person. Petr died at the aged of 56, his spokeswoman said on Monday.

“With deep regret we announce that PPF Group founder and majority shareholder Mr Petr Kellner died tragically in a helicopter crash in the Alaska Range on Saturday,” PPF Group spokeswoman Jitka Tkadlecova told AFP.

“The causes of the accident, in which five people died in total, will undergo investigation,” she added.

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Kellner, who meticulously guarded his privacy, owned the financial, telecommunications, engineering, and insurance PPF Group. The organization employs 94,000 people worldwide.

Czech media said Kellner was on a heli-skiing trip.

The Forbes magazine put Kellner’s wealth in 2020 at 293 billion Czech crowns (11.2 billion euros, $13.2 billion).

Kellner, who started his business selling copy machines, founded the PPF Group in 1991, two years after the fall of Communism in former Czechoslovakia.

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The group with global assets worth 44 billion euros comprises Home Credit International, the world’s largest non-banking consumer lender with extensive activities on the Chinese market.

PPF recently bought the CME media group running TV companies in central and eastern Europe. Meanwhile, it acquired Telenor’s telecommunications assets in the Balkans as well.

Kellner’s daughter Anna Kellnerova is a two-time Czech junior show jumping champion. She has an ambition to appear at the Tokyo Olympics this summer.

Kellner’s funeral will take place “in a narrow family circle”, Tkadlecova said.

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