Solorz signed one document. A court in Vaduz made it permanent.
Polish billionaire Zygmunt Solorz transferred founder's rights in his Liechtenstein foundations, tried to revoke the next day, and lost. His media empire now belongs to his children.
Zygmunt Solorz built one of Poland’s largest media and telecoms groups around Cyfrowy Polsat. He structured the ownership through two Liechtenstein foundations, with TiVi Foundation sitting at the top of the chain. TiVi held 69.13 per cent of the voting rights in the company, worth roughly $1.3 billion.
On 2 August 2024, Solorz signed a succession declaration transferring his founder’s rights within TiVi to his three children, including Tobias Solorz. The day after, he tried to revoke it.
That revocation failed. And the courts made it stick.
Two rulings, one result
The Princely District Court in Vaduz heard the case first and ruled on 19 May 2025 that Solorz’s original declaration was legally valid, effective, and binding. The court found that he had “validly transferred” his founder’s rights. His attempt to revoke them the following day carried no legal weight.
Solorz appealed. On 18 December 2025, the Princely High Court dismissed the appeal in full. The ruling was final.
Between those two decisions, things moved fast. In July 2025, Solorz was removed as chair of Cyfrowy Polsat’s supervisory board. Shares in the company dropped by 24 per cent over the year. In November 2025, Solorz filed a separate lawsuit in a US federal court, attempting to recover his assets through a different jurisdiction.
His legal adviser said Solorz “fundamentally disagrees” with the ruling and reserves the right to pursue all legal options, including a complaint with Liechtenstein’s Constitutional Tribunal.
What happened here
The details matter less than the principle. A founder signed a document. The document was clear. He changed his mind the next morning. The law did not care.
Solorz’s position was that he had been pressured into signing and that the declaration did not reflect his true intention. The courts looked at the document, looked at the circumstances, and concluded otherwise. Liechtenstein’s trust and foundation system is built on the principle that properly executed instruments hold. If founders could simply revoke them whenever they felt differently, the entire system would be worth nothing.
That is reassuring if you are a beneficiary or a trustee who wants certainty. It is less reassuring if you are a founder who assumed that your own structures would always answer to you.
The broader question
The Solorz case has already drawn attention from wealth advisers across jurisdictions. A headline in which a founder loses control of the empire he built tends to do that. The lesson is straightforward, even if it is uncomfortable: the protections embedded in these structures protect against the founder too. If you sign a succession document, and it is properly witnessed and executed, it is done. The fact that you built the business, funded the foundation, and never expected it to work this way does not matter once the ink is dry.
Anyone using Liechtenstein foundations or trusts would do well to read the judgment carefully. Not because the law changed, but because it worked exactly as written.
