Prague, Feb 3 (CTK) – Czech Finance Minister Andrej Babis (ANO) behaves as a hypocrite by drawing revenues from his Agrofert Holding’s bonds without subjecting them to taxes, and simultaneously pretending to fight tax evasion, PM Bohuslav Sobotka (Social Democrats, CSSD) has written on Facebook.
Having bought Agrofert bonds for one crown apiece, Babis has “fucked the Czech state off,” Sobotka wrote.
Reacting to him, Babis said Sobotka seems to have launched a new style of communication.
The right-wing opposition said on Thursday they wanted an extraordinary session of the Chamber of Deputies to be convoked to discuss suspected discrepancies in Babis’s incomes.
Babis, a food, chemical and media magnate whose ANO movement is the hot favourite in the October general election, has dismissed any wrongdoing.
“The bonds worth one crown each were a path for billionaire Andrej Babis to fuck the Czech state thoroughly off. He says it was temporarily legal. I say, this is huge hypocrisy,” Sobotka writes.
Asked by Czech Television, he ruled out that the vulgar expression had been planted in his Facebook account by someone else.
Babis told CTK that this seems to be Sobotka’s new style of communication.
“I never heard him speak this way before. In any case, I did nothing unlawful, nor did I cheat anyone. This is a lie, which I dismiss. If the prime minister wants to criticise me, he should put his own affairs in order first,” Babis said.
Sobotka wrote that Babis’s drawing money from Agrofert without taxing it and simultaneously pretending to fight tax evasion was clownery.
By buying the bonds, Babis used a loophole in the law, because the one-crown bonds, issued in 2012, were not subject to taxation. The tax base was rounded down to whole crowns under the law, which means that Babis paid zero tax.
Babis has dismissed having circumvented the law and said the loophole in the law is to blame on the former finance minister, now right-wing opposition TOP 09 leader, Miroslav Kalousek.
“I will not be accountable to people like Kalousek…You will not say I practiced tax evasion,” Babis said at the Chamber of Deputies plenary session on Thursday.
Kalousek insisted on Facebook that Babis’s practice is a tax fraud.
“There is a big difference between the words ‘procedure in accordance with law’ and ‘misuse of law.’ Fraudsters often confuse these words, with Minister Babis being a shining example,” Kalousek wrote.
Babis says Sobotka previously misused lawmakers’ perks to buy a flat worth seven million crowns.
Sobotka told CTK on Thursday that his incomes have always been transparent, comprised of his wage of a deputy or a government member, and that he never ran business.
