Babiš and the expressor of Prague will set a record, their issue will be discussed by the Chamber of Deputies for the third time
On Tuesday, the Mandate and Immunity Committee will begin to consider whether to recommend to the Chamber of Deputies to prosecute the chairman of the YES movement and former Prime Minister Andrej Babiš and ODS MP Bohuslav Svoboda. Babiš is the main accused in the case of a possible subsidy fraud in the construction of the Stork’s Nest farm. Svoboda got stuck in the case of the Prague Opencard, in which he received an invalid punishment. The committee wants to decide by the end of January.
Helena Válková (YES), chairwoman of the Mandate and Immunity Committee of the Chamber of Deputies, will start the meeting on Tuesday at half past nine in the morning, and a record will be set. Even triple. Never before in the history of the lower house of parliament has the committee discussed any criminal cases in three terms. However, the position on the publication of Babiš and Svoboda will be discussed for the third time.
The former Prime Minister, current chairman of the YES movement and MP Andrej Babiš is accused of subsidy fraud and damage to the European Union’s financial interests. According to the police, he shot his holding Agrofert as the owner of the company Čapí hnízdo in order to achieve a subsidy of 50 million crowns for small and medium-sized companies for the construction of a farm and hotel in Olbramovice in the Benešov region. Otherwise he would not be entitled to them.
Babiš regained his parliamentary immunity after the October elections. Supervisor prosecutor Jaroslav Šaroch will also become a co-holder of the record. He was at the committee meeting in August 2017, when the Chamber of Deputies first received a police request for Babiš’s extradition, and after the election of the next Chamber of Deputies in January 2018. No public prosecutor had to go to the committee three times.
Without Babiš, the committee will not comment
“The public prosecutor has accepted the invitation and will arrive,” confirmed Committee Chair Válková to Aktuálně.cz. Sharoch will be available to Members to help clarify any ambiguities relevant to their decision. “He will appear before the Mandate and Immunity Committee,” Aleš Cimbala, a spokesman for the Municipal Public Prosecutor’s Office in Prague, where Šaroch operates, also assured Aktuálně.cz.
Babiš also received an invitation. Participating here is not clear. He did not respond to Aktuálně.cz questions. His presence is a condition for the committee to be able to adopt a resolution. The conclusion will guide the final decisions of the Chamber of Deputies on Babiš’s criminal future. “He has the right to comment on this and we will follow my usual procedure,” Válková explained.
Committee members had more than three weeks in the criminal file to familiarize themselves with the case. Strict security measures accompanied his storage in a special room. The members of the committee had to sign a secrecy, they were only allowed to study the file in the mentioned room. The courier delivered the file to the Chamber of Deputies shortly after noon on December 7. He returned to the prosecutor’s office on December 30.
Supplemented file for Stork’s Nest
In the second half of last September, Babis was proposed to charge criminalists. However, Prosecutor Sharoch did not have time to decide on their request before the October elections, after which the head of the ANO movement reaffirms parliamentary immunity. Police in the meantime completed the file. An expert opinion became a part of it. It concerned the transfer of several shares in the Stork’s Nest company, which Babiš’s son Andrej was to acquire.
“I was in the United States from 2008 to 2010 and I couldn’t sign anything,” he said earlier of the time Babis Jr. took place. The transfer signature is not his, but it is forged. It was the expertise of scribe Aleš Čulík that was to clarify whether the signature was genuine. The expert submitted the report in early December. His conclusion is not public.
Together with Babiš, his former election adviser Jana Mayerová, with whom he worked as the Minister of Finance of the Government of Bohuslav Sobotka (ČSSD) in the previous period, also remains in the Čapí nest of the prosecution. As an expert on subsidies, she was to help Babiš hide Agrofert as the owner of the project. “Some affairs are still being organized for me, which someone is trying to create from the past,” Babiš denied guilt. Mayer also insists on innocence.
Unjustly convicted Svoboda
Member of Parliament Bohuslav Svoboda has been convicted since September 2016 of violating regulations on competition rules and violating the obligation to manage other people’s property. The Municipal Court in Prague thus punished him for his role in the Opencard case. Svoboda was to make a mistake in the years 2010 to 2013, when he was the mayor of Prague.
The Opencard card had several services for Praguers, whether it provides public transport tickets or access to the library. The project was completed in 2015 by the Prague City Hall under the leadership of Mayor Adriana Krnáčová (for YES). As of the following year, the card, which was held by 400,000 people at one time, is not issued. The municipality replaced it with the Lítačka card, the administration of which it has full control over.
Former mayor of Prague and since 2013 ODS deputy Bohuslav Svoboda. | Photo: Libor Fojtík
The Opencard project was launched before 2010 by the former mayor of Prague Pavel Bém (ODS). It was supposed to cost 89 million crowns, but the price increased to a billion. On the contrary, the card provided fewer services than Bém announced. After joining, the new political team tried to save the project. Under previous contracts, it awarded it without competition to the licensee, Haguess. However, this is exactly what Svoboda and his colleagues were guilty of, according to the court.
“Democracy in this country will end here. You know very well that I asked the House to extradite me myself. I do not regret it, I thought it would show that there is justice in this country. We still have a lot to fight against.” on the judgment Svoboda on leaving the courtroom. Another former mayor Tomáš Hudeček (TOP 09) also received the same punishment, but this was later cleared by the Court of Appeal.
“As usual about the release”
As Svoboda mentioned when evaluating the verdict, the Chamber of Deputies extradited him for the first time to prosecute him. It was January 2014. The investigation led to the aforementioned invalid sentence. He was sentenced to two and a half years in prison on probation with a three-year probationary period. However, part of the case did not go before the High Court of Appeal in Prague. At that time, the new Chamber of Deputies refused to prosecute him in January 2018.
Without the consent of the current Chamber, it will not be possible to conclude part of Svoboda’s part of the Opencard case in this election period either. The former mayor of Prague Aktuálně.cz has confirmed that he will attend Tuesday’s committee meeting. “And as usual, I will apply for extradition,” he added. The last time the Chamber of Deputies complied with his request, only 49 of the 147 deputies present raised their hands to refer the case to the Court of Appeal.
In the case of Babiš and Svoboda, it is not clear whether the committee will endorse the opinion for the plenary of the Chamber on Tuesday. It will depend on whether, in addition to Svoboda, the head of YES also arrives. “But the committee will certainly submit a proposal to the Chamber of Deputies by the end of January, I am quite convinced of that,” Válková said. However, if she does not decide on Tuesday, Válková will have to convene the committee once again by the end of the month.
How time went with the Stork’s Nest
Six years have passed since the first initiative in the matter of a possible subsidy fraud in the construction of the Stork’s Nest farm in November 2021, take a look at the basic points of the case’s timeline:
- On November 24, 2015, an anonymous author filed a criminal complaint with the High Public Prosecutor’s Office in Prague against an unknown perpetrator on suspicion that a criminal association had taken place in the Stork’s Nest case
- On December 29, 2015, the Prague police announced that they had launched an investigation into the case on suspicion of subsidy fraud and damage to the EU’s financial interests.
- On August 10, 2017, the Chamber of Deputies received a request for extradition for the prosecution of Andrej Babiš and the head of the ANO deputies, the former manager of Agrofert, Jaroslav Faltýnka, on September 6, the police issued them
- On November 21, 2017, after the parliamentary elections, the police again said about the extradition of both men to prosecution, the deputies complied on January 19, 2018.
- On May 3, 2018, the Municipal Public Prosecutor’s Office in Prague announced that Prosecutor Šaroch had stopped the prosecution of Jaroslav Faltýnek and three other people.
- On April 17, 2019, the police proposed to charge Prime Minister Babiš and other people for possible subsidy fraud and damage to the EU’s financial interests.
- On August 30, 2019, the supervising public prosecutor Jaroslav Šaroch decided to stop the prosecution, including Prime Minister Babiš
- On September 13, 2019, the head of the Municipal Public Prosecutor’s Office in Prague, Martin Erazim, announced that he had confirmed his subordinate’s conclusion.
- On December 4, 2019, the Attorney General Pavel Zeman annulled the decision to stop the prosecution of Prime Minister Andrej Babiš and the grant manager of the project Jana Mayerová in the Stork’s Nest case as illegal and premature.
- On May 31, 2021, Chief Investigator Pavel Nevtípil suggested prosecutor Jaroslav Šaroch to indict Andrej Babiš and Jana Mayerová.
- in July 2021, Prime Minister Andrej Babiš filed a motion to stop the prosecution
- On August 31, 2021, Jaroslav Šaroch returned the file to the police for investigation
- On September 20, 2021, forensic scientists handed over to the plaintiffs a supplemented file with a motion to indict
- On November 9, 2021, Prosecutor Šaroch requested the re-extradition of Andrej Babiš for prosecution after his re-election as a deputy.
- On 30 November 2021, the deadline for the delivery of the final report issued by the plaintiff during October expired, and the expert delivered it on 6 December.