Tykač has one foot in Australia

Energy billionaire Pavel Tykač told CNN Prima News in May that a terribly large number of people would not survive if the Russian natural gas were cut off. This of course hasn't happened so far, although Industry Min. Jozef Síkela says that no new Russian gas is flowing into the CR. Tykač agreed that same month to pay the equivalent of Kč 366m for an 8.49ha property in Australia, and the deal has now closed, as HN reported today. Dir. Rob Curtain of Sotheby's International Realty Peninsula told the Herald Sun that, "There are a lot of buyers heading out of Eastern Europe, it's one of our bigger markets." Not all of them are billionaires, he said. These ultra-rich individuals are apparently hedging against future events, including the possible failure of European energy policy. It's been seven months since Tykač first sounded the alarm about the possibility of dramatic change to Czech society. The change is clearly taking place, even if it's more gradual than Tykač predicted.