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May 5, 2017 www.intellinews.com I Page 4
nouncement, professing disappointment that one of the most stable Czech governments since the end of communism in 1989 is to wind up early. The country has had six different cabinets in the last decade.
However, the finance minister is also a smooth operator. He did not deny the authenticity of the recordings, but simply announced he would file a criminal complaint over the recorded phone calls. The finance minister claims he has been followed and wiretapped for months as part of an orches- trated slander campaign.
Babis’ ownership of media assets is in line with a trend in recent years that has seen local oligarchs buying up outlets in a clear bid to gain influ- ence. However, the entry of the billionaire owner of the country’s biggest employer Agrofert into government in early 2014 set alarm bells ringing louder. Several prominent editorial staff quit Ma- fra newspapers when Babis originally bought the holding.
The CSSD teamed up with opposition parties late last year to push through a conflict of interest bill that specifically targeted Babis. That forced him to put his business assets into a trust, but did
little to dent his popularity. His approval ratings are second only to the outspoken Zeman amongst Czech politicians.
Sobotka claimed that he had to resign, as he could no longer tolerate Babis’ questionable financial dealings. That is a reference to suspi- cion that the finance minister used a loophole to evade tax on bonds issued by Agrofert, as well as Babis’ continuing failure to explain how he could afford to buy Agrofert in the first place back in the early 1990s. However, few take the PM at his word, with the move clearly a last-minute gambit to try to lure voters back from Ano to the CSSD.
The leaked recordings appear to be an attempt
to reopen the debate over Babis’ business ethics. Ano has campaigned as an anti-establishment party that sought to upturn a corrupt system maintained by traditional parties, including the CSSD, even though it was founded and financed by one of the country’s leading oligarchs who has been involved in some questionable privatisations.
The tapes feature Babis advising his newspa- per’s journalist to sit on sensitive information on a number of politicians in order to use it ahead of the scheduled election in October.
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