Brno, Sept 20 (CTK) – The new Czech office supervising the financial affairs of political parties launched administrative proceedings against the ANO movement over a book in which its leader Andrej Babis presents his political vision, Czech Radio (CRo) writes on its website on Wednesday.
ANO spokesman Vladimir Vorechovsky confirmed this to the iRozhlas.cz server.
The Office may impose a fine of up to 100,000 crowns on ANO because the book violates the rules of the election campaign by not including the obligatory information on its ordering party and processor. In other words, it is not identified who produced the book and who paid for its production.
Vorechovsky said ANO is preparing an explanation for the Office. He said he hopes that ANO would not be fined thanks to it.
The information is missing only in the first two editions of the book, which means in about 30,000 of the 300,000 copies that have been issued so far, CRo writes.
Babis presented the book in June as part of the ANO movement’s 2035 vision. He says in it how the Czech Republic should look like in 2035 according to him.
ANO is the hot favourite of the general election scheduled for October 20-21. The rich businessman Babis was deputy prime minister and finance minister, but he had to leave the government over suspicious financial transactions and suspected influencing of the independent press he owned.
On Monday, the Office imposed the first fine on a political party: the Civic Democratic Alliance (ODA) must pay 19,000 crowns for lacking information on its advertising used in the election campaign. The ODA wants to challenge the decision.
The Office has launched administrative proceedings against eight groupings so far. The violations of the rules mostly concern lacking information on the client and processor of the election material and participation in the election campaign without official registration.
