Bratislava, April 25 (CTK) – Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis has filed a complaint against the publisher of the Slovak paper Novy Cas (NC) over its article from an interview with former StB officer Jan Sarkocy who called Babis a conscious collaborator of the Communist secret service, the paper wrote on Wednesday.
Babis demands an apology and one million euros.
Along with the paper, he has also lodged a complaint against Sarkocy himself, NC writes.
Babis has denied any collaboration with the StB.
The Regional Court in Bratislava rejected Babis’s lawsuit challenging as unrightful his registration as an StB agent in the StB files in January.
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.
Sarkocy told NC in February that he saw the original of the Babis’ file regarding his cooperation with the StB. He said nothing was false in the file.
Sarkocy said Babis was a man who wanted to benefit from his collaboration with the StB and that he liked money.
Babis then said Sarkocy was telling lies.
Babis’s lawyer wrote in the complaint that Babis felt the publication of false statement about him as a tremendous wrong.
He said Sarkocy’s statements were deliberately creating “a false picture of an egotist and dishonest man.”
The publisher of Novy Cas refused to apologise. His lawyer’s office said Babis had not proven that he was not an StB agent.
According to archive documents, Babis became an StB confidant in 1980. In 1982, he was won 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 to 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.
