Prague, Aug 14 (CTK) – Prague police head Milos Trojanek dismissed the claims about a political order in connection with police looking into the Capi hnizdo case involving government ANO chairman Andrej Babis and speculations about its timing before a general election, on the police web page on Monday.
Last week, the police asked the Chamber of Deputies for release of Babis and ANO deputy group head Jaroslav Faltynek for prosecution.
“I am unpleasantly surprised by the effort of certain individuals to challenge and politicise the checking of the case…The police at the regional directorate, which I head, have been apolitical and they abide exclusively by the laws of this country,” Trojanek wrote.
He wrote that with his stance he wants to react to “the effort of certain personalities to discredit the investigator of the Capi hnizdo case through the media.”
He backed the investigator, Pavel Nevtipil whom he did not name in his statement, however.
“I personally fully esteem him for his professionalism and work at full stretch and he has my full confidence,” Trojanek wrote.
Babis criticised Nevtipil in an official statement on the police request for his release for prosecution.
“It was given to the ‘correct’ policeman, Mr Nevtipil, who figured in the case of the Neograph firm stolen from businessman Sitta by godfathers,” Babis wrote.
He wrote the police investigation did not surprise him and that he considers it a part of the political struggle.
Faltynek wrote that the police investigation of his person is bullying.
Trojanek wrote that the case has been supervised by the Municipal State Attorney’s Office and that the High State Attorney’s Office in Prague recently completed a supervision of the case.
He wrote that the supervising state attorney has been informed of the request for the release of the two MPs for prosecution sent to the Chamber of Deputies.
Police spokeswoman Andrea Zoulova denied on Friday already the claims that the detectives did not inform the state attorney about the request.
It also ensued from her statement that the police are considering accusing other people in the case. Media mention Babis’s wife Monika, whom he married in July, and her brother in this connection.
Until 2007, the Farma Capi hnizdo company belonged to Babis’s Agrofert Holding. Afterwards, its stake was transferred to bearer shares for a small firm to reach a 50-million crown EU subsidy, which a firm of the huge Agrofert Holding could never get. It observed this condition for a few years, but later it again returned to Babis’s concern.
At an extraordinary meeting of the Chamber of Deputies initiated by the opposition last year, billionaire businessman Babis said the farm was owned by two of his adult children and a brother of his partner in life. He married her in July.
Babis transferred the Agrofert concern, including some media outlets, to trust funds in February to comply with an amended conflict of interest law.
If the Chamber of Deputies released Babis and Faltynek for prosecution and if they defended their mandates in the October 20-21 general election, the police would have to ask the new Chamber of Deputies for their release if it wanted to carry ou the investigation.
