Pavol Krúpa

Born 1972 in Bratislava, Slovakia.
Graduated from University of Economics in Bratislava in 1994.
Stated during a lecture: “My first business was that I bought winter jackets in Austria after the season for a few hundred and sold them for two and a half thousand before the next winter.”^[1]
Later, he founded a company selling financial and insurance products. His partner at that time was Peter Krištofovič, now one of the richest Slovaks.
In the mid-1990s, Krúpa focused on trading in securities, and an opportunity opened up to him thanks to voucher privatization. He also started buying up shares of various companies, which he sold at a profit.^[2]
He founded Arca Capital in Slovakia in 2003.^[3]
He drew attention in the Czech Republic in October 2007, when his company Arca Capital Bohemia acquired 31% of Czech electricity trader Moravia Energo for 5.8 million USD from the former Czech prime minister Stanislav Gross. Gross himself had bought the shares for less than 1 million USD six months prior.^[4]^[5] In spring 2008, Arca Capital sold the shares for 7.9 million USD to the owner of the remaining 69% of shares, Tomas Chrenek.^[6]
In 2007, it was reported that he spent a significant part of the year in Ukraine, which has become his third home after Bratislava and Prague.^[7]
In 2013, he wrote an article for HN Online^[8] in which he criticized Yulia Tymoshenko’s gas deal with Russia which led to her imprisonment.^[9]
In March 2014, police froze money in Arca Capital Global Equity fund’s accounts in connection with an out-of-court settlement that state owned ČEZ had reached with Arca Capital group after they had bought back minority shareholders’ claims of the former distribution company Severomoravská energetika.^[10] The funds were unfrozen in July 2014.^[11]^[12]
During an interview in 2015, he spoke about the situation in Ukraine and how business there is concluded – which led to him indirectly admitting to corruption.^[13]
In 2016, he tried to buy up the debts of the failing tech company ČKD Praha DIZ. By then, the company had already entered insolvency proceedings and had assets seized due to allegations of tax frauds.^[14] While this is in line with Krupal’s business strategy, what caused a controversy was that he had employed the former financial director of the ČKD group and member of the board of directors of ČKD Praha DIZ, Soňa Vladařová, as investment director and, from December 2017 on, as a member of the supervisory board at Arca Capital CEE. She was charged and arrested in April 2018 on account of tax fraud during her time at ČKD, which ended her employment contract with Arca.^[15]
In 2017, Arca Capital Bohemia applied for access to documents relating to a procedure for reviewing State aid, citing public interest. The documents in question were the Framework Agreement of 22 June 1998 concluded between the Czech National Bank, GE Capital Bank, a.s. and GE Capital International Holdings Corporation, USA in connection with the privatisation and restructuring of Agrobanka Praha a.s. and its annexes as well as amendments from November 2000 and November 2001. The case was ultimately dismissed in 2018 by the General Court (Second Chamber) of the Court of Justice of the European Union.^[16] This was in regard to a lawsuit Arca, in its position as shareholder of Agrobanka Praha during its liquidation, filed in October 2017, claiming that the agreement is invalid on the grounds that the purchase agreement does not contain essential elements and is contrary to the law.^[17]
In early 2018, the Czech National Bank banned Krupa from managing the Arca Capital CEE investment fund on the grounds of him withholding important information in his application for permission to head a fund managing assets worth almost 900 million crowns. The regulator also accused him of having previously served on the boards of companies that were punished for violations of capital market rules. The central bank literally stated that Krúpa does not inspire confidence in it.^[18]
In October 2018, he received a state award from the then President of the Czech Republic, Miloš Zeman for his fight against businessman Zdeněk Bakal and his consistent criticism of Bakal’s mining company OKD^[19].^[20]^[21]
In autumn 2020, it became public knowledge that Arca investments was facing financial difficulties.^[22] Cited reasons for this are (i) uncontrolled expansion and insufficient supervision of dozens of subsidiaries, (ii) the Covid-19 pandemic, which caused a loss of liquidity and (iii) unreliable accounting and suspicion of machinations, which are being investigated by the Slovak NAKA^[23]. In July 2025, the group’s debt was estimated to be over 700 million EUR.^[24]
In 2021, he was convicted in the US for slander and extortion of Czech billionaire Zdeněk Bakala – he ran an extortion campaign against him and offered to stop it for enough money. He was sentenced to pay Bakala 32.4 million USD.^[25][26]
In September 2022, it became known that Krupa refused to pay and didn’t acknowledge the US ruling.[27]
In August 2025, the High Court in Prague, as the court of appeal, confirmed the approval of the reorganization plan of the IFIS investment fund for Arca Investments by a resolution dated August 20, 2025.^[28]
In January 2026, Krupa attended and disrupted Proxenta’s general meeting with his aggressive behaviour. He stated that he attended the general meeting as a representative of several PCI shareholders but refused to answer the question of whether he owns shares in this company himself.[29]

Pavol Krúpa

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