It is the largest civil protest in the Czech Republic since 1989: A quarter of a million people demonstrated on Sunday in Prague against the Prime Babiš. You throw him a massive EU subsidy fraud and are demanding his resignation.
He was a rich businessman and the second richest citizen of the Czech Republic – and he’s been the end of 2017, Prime Minister of the Czech Republic: As the multi-billionaire Andrej Babiš two years ago, as a “newcomer”, the Czech policy mix, he convinced many of his followers that he promised a fight in the election, a hard-line approach against corruption and against the cliques of the traditional political elites. “But then revealed that he himself has more problems than he criticized traditional politicians,” says Ladislav Cabada, a political scientist at the Metropolitan University Prague (MUP), in an interview with Deutsche Welle. “This hypocrisy is the main reason why so many people in the Czech Republic to demonstrate against him,” he explains.
For Jiří Pehe, Director of New York University in Prague (NYUP), it is a combination of three reasons, which have angered his people so that they came in droves to the Prague summer mountain, to protest against Babiš: the first is his conflict of interest in the allocation of EU funding; secondly, the resulting current prosecution against him; and, thirdly, its Communist past, including the collaboration with the former Czechoslovak state police StB.
In The Statement Of Needs: The Czech Republic’s Prime Andrej Babiš
“Agent Bureš”
Babiš is mentioned as “Agent Bureš” with the registration number 25085 in about a dozen files to the StB. The previously published documents according to which he is supposed to be from November 1982 to 1985, knowingly as an “informal Agent” for the former Czechoslovak secret police worked. The Premier himself denies this vehemently, and tried, in front of Slovak courts to contest the allegation of collaboration will be dropped. But his complaint before the Slovak constitutional court was dismissed. The European court of human rights in Strasbourg confirmed this decision in December 2018.
His diehard supporters bother hardly. “Which is more or less matter,” believes Petr Honzejk of the Czech economic newspaper “Hospodařské noviny“. Many believed that it was a long time ago, and at that time almost everyone had to make any compromises. And those voters, who voted for the Communist party, would have no Problem with the StB.
The Czech Republic experienced at the weekend, the largest civil protests since the “Velvet Revolution” in 1989
One flew over the stork’s nest…
Before Babiš came into politics, he was the chief of the Agricultural, food and chemical conglomerate Agrofert. In 2017, the group employed almost 33,000 employees in some 250 subsidiary companies. The group made a total turnover of 160 billion crowns (the equivalent of more than six billion euros) and achieved a profit of 4.8 billion crowns (190 million euros). Babiš himself was to be the second richest man in the Czech Republic, the US magazine Forbes estimates his fortune at around three billion euros. In 2013, he bought the media group Mafra, the two high-circulation Newspapers “Lidové noviny” and “MF DNES” are. At that time, he often referred to as Babisconi, according to the Italian media Mogul and later Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi.
Meanwhile, Babis is not formally the head of Agrofert. But from his time as an entrepreneur, the beginnings of a political affair that weighs heavily on him come. In 2006, the company Inoba bought a rundown farm in the vicinity of Prague. Inoba is Agrofert, a subsidiary company of the group. Today is a holiday and conference centre with the name “Čapí hnízdo“ (“stork’s nest is in the same place”), the construction of which was financed with EU subsidy funds that were actually intended for the support of small – and medium-sized enterprises. Only in 2016 Babiš admitted that the farm belonged to in the time, as EU funds flowed, his two adult children and the brother of his partner. Since 2017, the Czech police are investigating Babiš. He referred to the investigation as “politically motivated” and all the allegations against him as “lies”.
The “stork’s nest”, a Spa resort at the gates of Prague, is said to have painted unfairly EU subsidies in million height
In this context, it is particularly noteworthy: Although Babiš was in 2014, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance and for the distribution of EU Subsidies, a responsibility was put down, he resigned as Chairman of the agricultural group in February of 2017, after a new law forced him to do so. And today, he is not at the top of the government, which decides on the allocation of subsidies, which, among other things, the subsidiaries of his former company. “Under Czech law he has separated himself from his former assets,” says NYUP Director Pehe. “It would be a purely Czech matter, he would be able to wash in there.” But it is not a purely Czech matter – and so the European Commission ordered a study to find out where the money from Brussels will have actually occurred.
At the beginning of June, the first preliminary report from Brussels was released. A number of media, according to Babiš has, therefore, great influence on Agrofert. The final report should confirm these conclusions, would have to Agrofert, or the Czech government pay – the great majority of European funds, the group suffered.