Prague, Oct 24 (CTK) – ANO first deputy chairman Jaroslav Faltynek was re-elected the head of the movement’s deputy group, the strongest in the new Czech Chamber of Deputies, at the ANO MPs’ first meeting after the weekend general election on Tuesday, according to CTK sources.
The ANO MPs also elected the group’s seven deputy heads: Roman Kubicek, Josef Hajek, Jana Pastuchova and Jan Volny, who were re-elected, and newcomers Pavel Pustejovsky, Klara Dostalova and Jan Richter.
The ANO deputy group has grown from 47 seats in 2013 to 78 seats in the 200-seat lower house after ANO’s landslide in the general election in which it gained 29.6 percent of the vote.
Faltynek’s re-election as the group’s chairman was expected, as he was not striving for entering a new cabinet.
In the previous election term, he was the chairman of the agriculture committee of the lower house and a member of the organisational committee.
Faltynek formerly worked in the leadership of Agrofert group owned by ANO chairman and former finance minister Andrej Babis.
Both are among the 11 people charged with an EU subsidy fraud for the Capi hnizdo farm.
Billionaire businessman Babis transferred the Agrofert concern, including some media outlets, to trust funds in February to comply with an amended conflict of interest law.
The Chamber of Deputies released Babis and Faltynek for prosecution early in September.
However, their prosecution was interrupted as both were re-elected to the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of Czech parliament, and regained lawmakers’ immunity. The police will have to ask the lower house for their release for prosecution again and the Chamber of Deputies in its new composition will decide on it then.
