Prague, July 25 (CTK) – The government ANO chairman and former finance minister, Andrej Babis, denied having ever had a police file on an open case in his hands during his hearing before the Czech lower house commission investigating information leaks from police files on Tuesday, he has told reporters.
He also told reporters after the hearing that he had filed a legal complaint due to the audio recordings of his meetings with Marek Pribil, former journalist from the daily he had owned. The police are dealing with the case.
Lower house commission chairman Martin Plisek (TOP 09) said Babis had only presented his political stances to the commission and repeated cliches.
“I consider this the continuation of a political fight,” Babis reiterated, commenting on the establishment of the commission, initiated by MPs for the senior government Social Democrats (CSSD) and the opposition TOP 09.
Babis added that this proved these two parties acted in alliance with the aim to provoke negative views of him in the public.
Billionaire businessman Babis said he had filed a legal complaint against an unknown perpetrator for violating the rights of another person in early May and that he had been questioned by the police.
“I have a substantiated suspicion of having been spied on and bugged for some time,” Babis said.
The lower house commission heard Basis for about half an hour.
“I have never had an open case file in my hands, never looked into such a file, so it was a quick hearing,” Babis said, adding that he had answered every question.
Plisek said Babis had refused to talk about having communicated with Pribil and that he told the commission nothing about the content of their meetings.
The commission also questioned Pribil for about 2.5 hours on Tuesday.
After the hearing, Pribil only repeated that he had not discussed any open case files with Babis and that he hoped he had proved this to the commission.
The police are checking the recordings that appeared on an anonymous Twitter account in early May. The account’s name, Julius Suman, refers to former communist secret police (StB) officer who allegedly won Babis over for cooperation under the previous regime, which both deny.
The recordings indicate that Pribil was giving Babis documents from the police file on the Beretta case concerning the information leaks from a criminal file. Pribil says in the recordings that the data will harm the CSSD and the opposition Civic Democrats (ODS) and Babis discusses with Pribil the most suitable time for releasing the compromising material.
Babis and Pribil reject this interpretation.
Babis, who was dismissed from the coalition cabinet in May due to his dubious business activities, says he became a victim of a targetted provocation.
Pribil says the recordings were edited and their words cited out of context.
The lower house commission will also invite Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka (CSSD) to a hearing over the handling of the files on the case of the OKD mining company, Plisek told reporters after the commission’s meeting on Tuesday.
Besides, the commission wants to hear the former chief of the elite police organised crime squad (UOOZ), Robert Slachta.
The commission also chose the cases in which it would ask for the witnesses to be released from secrecy, such as the Beretta case and the cases in which former PM Petr Necas (ODS) and the former head of his office and his current wife, Jana Necasova (previously Nagyova), are involved, Plisek said.
The commission will meet again next Tuesday.
