CSG Sends Letter to Senator J.D. Vance Addressing His Concerns Regarding Planned Acquisition of Vista Outdoor’s Sporting Products Business, The Kinetic Group

The Czechoslovak Group (“CSG”) owner and CEO Michal Strnad today sent an open letter to U.S. Senator J.D. Vance (R-OH) addressing concerns he raised in a letter to U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen in connection to CSG’s proposed acquisition of Vista Outdoor Inc.’s (NYSE: VSTO) (“Vista Outdoor”) Sporting Products business – recently renamed The Kinetic Group.

The full text of the letter can be found below:

April 16, 2024

Senator J. D. Vance
288 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510

Dear Senator Vance,

In January, you sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen expressing your concerns about the proposed sale of The Kinetic Group, formerly Vista Outdoor’s Sporting Products business, to our company, The Czechoslovak Group (“CSG”). In your letter, you claimed that CSG is a company with a long record of wrongdoing and well-documented connections to American adversaries. Specifically, you mentioned ties to Putin's regime and violations of international arms embargoes. Although we were shocked by these false accusations, we waited to respond until we published our financial results for 2023, and with them a transparent profile of our group's business.

Senator, with all due respect, your assessment of us was profoundly mistaken. CSG is one of the most important private supporters of the Ukrainian militate effort, a country to which we have supplied much-needed weapon systems dating back to 2018, well before the outbreak of open Russian aggression. Since the Russian army's attack on Ukraine, we have supplied the Ukrainian Army – with the help of the government of the Czech Republic and other NATO countries, including the U.S. – over a hundred pieces of heavy equipment and, most importantly, hundreds of thousands of pieces of artillery ammunition, of which we are one of the most important European manufacturers.¹

CSG Group companies are also suppliers to the U.S. military and have a significant history of cooperation with major American defense industry corporations. An example is General Dynamics, from whose European company General Dynamics European Land Systems we obtained a license for the production of Pandur wheeled armored personnel carriers and also purchased the FMG ammunition factory in Spain. Another example is Raytheon, for which we fulfilled a contract to train Afghan National Army pilots using American UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters. Last but not least, we would like to point out that several of our companies hold NATO security clearance level SECRET.