1947 trial of late shoe magnate Jan Antonin Bata to be reopened

A Prague court has agreed to the reopening of the 1947 trail of the late shoe magnate Jan Antonin Bata. He was sentenced in absentia to 15 years in jail for not publicly joining the resistance to the Nazis. His nephew Tomas Bata, who is 94, appealed for the case to be reopened sixty years after the original trial, which he says was manipulated. Jan Antonin Bata did a great deal to expand the international Bata shoe company after its founder, his step-brother, also called Tomas Bata, died in 1932. He himself died in the mid 1960s in Brazil, where he had founded a number of towns.

Author: Ian Willoughby