Bratislava/Prague, Feb 16 (CTK) – Current Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis (ANO) deliberately cooperated with the Czechoslovak communist secret police StB in the 1980s from the beginning and the StB file on him was not falsified, former StB officer Jan Sarkocy told journalists on Friday.
“Mr Sarkocy is lying,” Babis told CTK in reaction.
Babis said Sarkocy offered to his lawyer five years ago to testify to Babis’s benefit. Sarkocy also claimed he could influence the court ruling, but the lawyer rejected it, Babis added.
“He is an absolutely untrustworthy person and I am shocked that Czech media consider him a relevant source of information,” Babis said.
Sarkocy said he saw the original file that the StB had on Babis. “Nothing has been falsified in this file,” he said.
He said Babis was a man who wanted to have profit from cooperation with the StB and who loved money.
Earlier this week, a Slovak court rejected the lawsuit in which Babis challenged his listing among StB agents. Last year, the Slovak Constitutional Court cancelled the verdicts of lower level courts that ruled in favour of Babis. Babis said he would file a new complaint against his StB listing.
The Constitutional Court ruled that Babis cannot sue the Slovak Nation’s Memory Institute (UPN) for the StB listing because the UPN had not infringed upon Babis’s personal rights. It also ruled that courts wrongly based their verdicts on the testimony of former StB officers who had not been relieved of their duty of confidentiality.
Furthermore, the Constitutional Court challenged the trustworthiness of these witnesses who testified in favour of Babis and whose testimonies were crucial in the original court proceedings. For example, former StB officer Andrej Kulha said Babis’s file shows that Babis cooperated with the StB without being aware of it. On the contrary, UPN researchers Jergus Sivos and Radek Schovanek said the archive files mentioning Babis’s cooperation seem trustworthy.
Sarkocy also played a role in the current scandal of British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn. He said Friday Corbyn knowingly collaborated with the StB in the 1980s and received money for it.
According to archive documents, Babis became a StB confidant in 1980. in 1982, he was won over for cooperation with the StB as an agent, codenamed Bures, by StB officer Julius Suman. But Babis challenged his StB listing and Suman said in court that the StB never recruited Babis.
According of Czech archive documents, Sarkocy worked as an StB officer in Bratislava (1980-84) and at the Czechoslovak embassy in London (1986-89). Unlike his former colleagues, Sarkocy was not heard in court during the proceedings that Babis initiated in the past few years.
