Billionaire Babiš re-elected ANO political movement leader

Prague, March 2 (CTK) - The Czech ANO 2011 political movement re-elected billionaire Andrej Babis leader at its national conference Saturday, ANO 2011 spokeswoman Radka Burketova told CTK.

Babis was proposed for chairman by most of the regional branches. He was the only candidate for the post and nearly all delegates supported him in the vote.

Former deputy local development minister Vera Jourova was elected deputy chairwoman. Jourova had been charged with corruption, but a court acquitted her of the charges and she was paid compensation.

Other new deputy heads are Jana Valincicova, Petr Harvanek, Jan Hammer and Hana Greplova. Jaroslav Faltynek did not defend his post of deputy head. ANO 2011 now has five deputy heads instead of five.

The new leadership will organise the campaign before the mid-2014 general election. The movement has an ambition of winning parliamentary seats.

"Our goal is to succeed in the next parliamentary election," Babis said.

The priorities of the election programme will be defined at a conference in April, but its final version will be available only next year.

Babis said ANO 2011 would focus on unemployment, support to business and lower taxes.

"I can see no reason why our country should have one of the highest value-added tax rates in Europe," he said.

ANO means "yes" in Czech and it is an acronym of the movement's name, the Action of Dissatisfied Citizens.

Babis has been officially heading the movement since its constituent meeting last year. He founded it in 2011.

ANO 2011 took part in the Senate elections last autumn, but none of its candidates succeeded. The movement has recently set up branches in all Czech regions.

"We have developed our structure. We have 91 district branches and 14 regional branches," Babis said.

Babis gave nearly 30 million crowns to ANO 2011 and his companies donated it further 26 million.

Babis said the party received 7.5 million crowns from about 420 smaller sponsors. Frantisek Piskanin, owner of the HOPI logistics firm, and Zdenek Ricar, owner of the Rainbow company, gave one million crowns each.

Babis is the owner and head of the Agrofert farm-food and chemical group, one of the biggest Czech companies with 28,000 employees. He is considered one of the richest and most influential entrepreneurs in the Czech Republic.

According to the U.S. Forbes magazine world's billionaires list, Babis's net property is worth $1.4 billion.