New articles in Czech: 

https://co-je-s-andrejem-babisem-mladsim.webnode.cz/podnet-vyboru-osn-pro-nasilna-zmizeni-ve-veci-andreje-babise-ml/ 

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https://twitter.com/andrejbabisjr 

https://www.facebook.com/andrejbabisjr  

Open Letter to Dr. Cyril Höschl

https://co-je-s-andrejem-babisem-mladsim.webnode.cz/open-letter-to-dr-cyril-hoschl/

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https://www.intellinews.com/new-czech-lower-house-to-vote-on-lifting-babis-immunity-for-eu-fraud-prosecution-224334/?

Under pressure: Czech prime minister Andrej Babis

(EPA) 

By bne IntelliNews October 20, 2021

Czech acting Supreme Public Prosecutor Jaroslav Saroch will ask the lower house of parliament to lift the immunity from prosecution of Prime Minister Andrej Babis (ANO) so he can be tried in the Stork's Nest case, where he is alleged to have committed fraud with EU subsidies.

This vote will take place after the constituent session of the new Chamber of Deputies on November 8, confirmed Ales Cimbala, a spokesperson for the Prague City Prosecutor's Office, to the Czech News Agency.

Saroch was originally supposed to make a decision on the police's motion to file charges by October 20, but given that Babis regained his seat in the house after the general election with an MP´s immunity, his prosecution is now again suspended.

"The public prosecutor's office is bound only by the Criminal Procedure Code in its activities, and for that reason it must now respect the fact that one of the accused persons has regained his parliamentary mandate and the immunity that goes with it. No criminal proceedings can currently be taken against this person," Cimbala explained. "The Chamber of Deputies will be asked to make this person available for further criminal prosecution following the establishment of the relevant bodies of the Chamber," Cimbala added.

The decision to ask for the lifting of Babis' immunity does not necessarily mean that Saroch agrees that there is now enough evidence to go to trial. However, it indicates that events are now moving in that direction.

"The request by the Prague prosecutor to lift Babiš's immunity is an interesting development, simply because if the prosecutor had decided that Mr Babiš should not be sent to court, should not be prosecuted, he would probably not ask for this," political commentator Jiri Pehe told Radio Prague International. "His move seems to suggest that he is seriously thinking about sending Mr Babiš to court, to actually send his entire case higher, so to speak."

The six-year-old case has been repeatedly held up, giving rise to suspicions that Babis has interefered with its progress. Saroch's predecessor had resigned, complaining of interference by ANO's justice minister, who had herself been appointed in place of an insufficiently loyal predecessor. The Chamber of Deputies has already handed Babis over for prosecution twice, first in September 2017 and then in January 2018 after the elections in which Babis was re-elected.

Saroch returned the case to the police for further investigation at the beginning of September, ostensibly due to the uncovering of new information, ensuring that the issue was shelved until after the general election on October 8-9.

It had been expected that Saroch - who before he became acting supreme public prosecutor had said there was not enough evidence to prosecute Babis - would drop the case after the election hubbub was over, but the defeat of Babis in those elections may have changed matters.

Both Babis and his family have been charged as part of the investigation into allegations of how €2.3mn in EU funds were allegedly falsely obtained by the Stork's Nest conference centre, for which Babis' son Andrej Babis junior was one of the nominal owners.

The EU funds were designated for small enterprises, while according to police and an EU investigation, the complex was in reality always part of the premier's Agrofert conglomerate. Babis dismisses both the EU and Czech probes as political attacks.

Also in September, Babis junior was questioned by police about his accusation of his father allegedly kidnapping him and holding him captive in the Crimea to prevent him from testifying in the Stork's Nest case in 2017.

On October 20, PM´s son approached the police saying his father reportedly wants to meet with him, which, according to his lawyer, Vitezslav Dohnal, could be influencing a witness, the news server SeznamZpravy reported.

Dohnal told the server that he has already informed police and prosecutor Saroch about the PM´s efforts.

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Czech PM claims innocence over £13m French chateau but could become first victim of Pandora Papers

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/czech-republic-babis-election-pandora-b1931839.html 

Monday 04 October 2021 

The Czech Republic goes to the polls at the weekend, just as its billionaire PM stands accused in the Pandora Papers' leak, reports William Nattrass in Prague

For Czech prime minister Andrej Babis, the timing of the Pandora Papers could not have been worse.

Documents detailing the financial dealings of world leaders in tax havens include the revelation that Babis used a convoluted structure of offshore companies when purchasing property in France worth tens of millions of euros in 2009.

He is accused of passing money through three separate companies in order to buy luxury properties including a £13m chateau on the French Riviera.

With Czech parliamentary elections taking place on October 8-9, Babis now risks becoming the first victim of the Pandora Papers' revelations.

The latest polls have shown a tightening in the Czech election race. Babis's ANO party is now projected to win 25.2 per cent of the vote, ahead of the SPOLU opposition coalition on 20.9 per cent.

Furious reactions to the Pandora Papers could further weaken Babis's position.

"How intensively Czech officials try to investigate the Pandora Papers will show to what extent the Czech state has been occupied by Babis and his people," said the chief editor of a leading anti-Babis news portal. A Slovak newspaper, meanwhile, said "the scheme, as he used it, is one of the most popular among terrorists, drug and arms smugglers, and corrupt politicians".

Speaking to The Independent, opposition Pirate party MEP Mikulas Peksa claimed "the Pandora Papers show why Andrej Babis was never supportive of efforts to fight for transparency and against corruption and tax evasion".

Populist Babis used a television debate last night to protest his innocence, saying the allegations are part of a conspiracy to remove him from power, and that the events in question took place long before he entered politics.

But one financial crime expert said "no normal business dealing would look anything like this", noting traits of money laundering practices in Babis's suspicious series of transactions.

Although it is thought the complex payment method did not bring Babis any significant benefits in terms of avoiding tax, he did not declare the existence of his foreign companies to the Czech authorities. 

Andrej Babis

Shortly before parliamentary elections in the Czech Republic, police have again recommended fraud charges against Prime Minister Andrej Babis.

Files related to the investigation, supplemented by several witness statements, are now before the public prosecutor, the judicial authorities confirmed on Tuesday.

He must decide within two months whether to bring charges, close the case or - as he has done several times before - order further investigations. The deadline can be extended.

The so-called Stork's Nest affair is about the accusation of fraud involving EU subsidies. Babis is accused of having obtained subsidies for the construction of the Stork's Nest spa resort in the amount of almost 2 million euros (2.35 million dollars) in 2008.

The funds were intended for small and medium-sized enterprises, but Babis was at the head of a corporate conglomerate with almost 200 companies in the agricultural, food and chemical industries. He denies the accusations.

Amid great media interest, Babis' son, Andrej Babis Junior, had recently testified on the matter to the police. He was originally one of the accused himself.

"I want to emphasize that I never wanted to be part of a subsidy scam," he told the newspaper MF Dnes afterwards.

Latest polls ahead of the October 8-9 parliamentary elections predict a victory for the head of government's populist party ANO, which means "Yes" in Czech.

According to the polling agency Ipsos, it would get 27 per cent of the vote, closely followed by the conservative grouping Spolu (Together) with 25 per cent. 

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Andrej Babis is being investigated by the European Commission and the Czech police. 

The European Commission has rejected a request filed by the Czech government to delay its submission on how it plans to improve its control mechanisms to prevent conflicts of interest, such as those for which billionaire premier Andrej Babis has fallen foul of EU rules.

The Czech authorities, which had asked for 60 more days to reply, now have to send a report by September 22, newswire iRozhlas.cz reported. This means it cannot kick the issue into touch until after the October 3 general election, though the Commission is unlikely to comment on the report until the election is over.

The European Commission is currently not reimbursing the Czech state for subsidies given to Agrofert and has threatened to stop reimbursing Czech spending on wider EU subsidies until the government clarifies its policy.

"We requested this postponement in order to take all steps to answer all the questions that the European Commission put to the Czech Republic. Also because the cooperation of several ministries and organs was needed, or is needed, including the Supreme Audit Office. That takes time, and that was the main reason for requesting the move," said Daniela Grabmullerova, Director of the Department for Coordination of EU Funds and International Relations at the Ministry of Regional Development.

According to iRozhlas.cz, the EC is also requesting information on a due diligence review of 12 projects by subsidiaries of the prime minister´s Agrofert congomerate from October 2021. Agrofert is the largest private Czech recipient of EU funds, creating insurmountable conflicts of interest because of Babis' political power, according to critics.

Despite the EU refusal to reimburse the Czech state for EU subsidies given to Agrofert, the government has continued to send money to the conglomerate, the largest private Czech recipient of EU money, and is pursuing legal action against the EU for not reimbursing them.

Babis is separately under investigation by Czech police for alleged fraud over his use of EU funds for building his Storks Nest conference centre, 60km south of Prague. Prague criminal investigators, who have been gathering fresh evidence regarding the Stork's Nest fraud case against Babis, have now submitted the investigation file to the Municipal State Prosecutor's Office in Prague, proposing filing new charges, a police spokesperson confirmed on September 20.

Despite five years of police investigations, at the beginning of September the Public Prosecutor Jaroslav Saroch returned the case to the police for further investigation, due to the uncovering of new information. He now has to decide whether to file new charges in the case, but it is unlikely to do so before the general election.

The public prosecutor's predecessor had resigned, complaining of interference by ANO's justice minister, who had herself been appointed in place of an insufficiently loyal predecessor.

Both Babis and his family have been charged as part of the investigation into allegations of how €2.3mn in EU funds were allegedly falsely obtained by the Stork's Nest conference centre, for which Babis' son Andrej Babis junior was one of the nominal owners. The EU funds were designated for small enterprises, while according to police and an EU investigation, the complex was in reality always part of the premier's Agrofert conglomerate.

Also earlier this month, Andrej Babis junior was questioned by police about his accusation of his father allegedly kidnapping him and holding him captive in the Crimea. to prevent him from testifying in the Stork's Nest case in 2017.

Babis dismisses both the EU and Czech probes as political attacks.

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... The son of Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš, Andrej Babiš Jr., was questioned by police in Prague for over six hours on Monday in connection with a case surrounding a conference centre built by his father. The PM is facing charges of subsidy fraud in connection with the Stork's Nest complex and his son was previously also charged over the matter.

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... Babiš's son to testify against father...

https://www.expats.cz/czech-news/article/czech-morning-news-in-brief-top-headlines-for-september-13-2021 

Prime Minister's son to testify in Stork's Nest case today

The son of Prime Minister Andrej Babiš will testify to police today over the Stork's Nest affair, in which a CZK 50 million EU subsidy was used for construction at the Stork's Nest farm originally owned by Babiš's Agrofert holding. Andrej Babiš Jr. claims the affair was planned by his father and that he was used as a frontman for the operation.

Babiš Jr. also claims he was later abducted and sent to Crimea during previous police investigations of the affair. After receiving EU subsidies, the Stork's Nest farm was returned to Babiš's Agrofert, which was later transferred into trust funds in 2017. Investigators accuse Babiš of damaging the financial interests of the European Union and committing subsidy fraud. 

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https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/short_news/czech-pm-to-be-taken-to-court-again-this-time-by-his-son/ 

By Aneta Zachová, Sep 10, 2021

Andrej Babiš junior - son of the Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš - says he is "determined to file a criminal complaint" against his father. "Crimes have been committed against me. My father should be liable for what he dared to do to me," Babiš junior told newspaper Deník N.

Babiš junior is accusing his father of dragging him into the case of alleged misuse of EU funds, just one month ahead of the Czech parliamentary elections.

He also says he was held in Crimea against his will to stop him from giving evidence in the case.

The prime minister is denying the allegations, calling his son mentally ill.

The Czech police interrogated Babiš junior for five hours on Thursday. He provided them with an expert opinion suggesting he has no mental health issues.

The Czech PM is suspected of having illegally acquired €2 million from EU funds for a conference centre called Stork Nest Farm.

In June 2021, police investigators recommended pressing criminal charges against him but the state attorney returned the case to the police for further investigations, so the case remains open.

Babiš has denied any wrongdoing.

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Police to question Czech PM's son about alleged kidnapping to stop him testifying in EU subsidy fraud case

09/09/2021

Andrej Babiš Jr., the son and namesake of the Czech prime minister, is due to speak to police on Thursday about his alleged abduction to Crimea in 2017.

He claims that his father had him taken to the Ukrainian peninsula against his will in order to prevent him from testifying about alleged EU subsidy fraud by his father.

The Czech prime minister is suspected of having wrongfully acquired 50 million crowns in EU funds for a conference centre near Prague known as the Stork's Nest. He denies any wrongdoing.

To date, police have not questioned Andrej Babiš Jr., who resides in Switzerland. Since arriving in the Czech Republic in July, he has spoken out publicly against his father, and recently confronted him at a campaign event.

The prime minister says that his son is mentally ill and denies having him forcibly removed from the Czech Republic.

Author: Brian Kenety

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Czech weekend news in brief: Top stories for September 5, 2021

https://www.expats.cz/czech-news/article/czech-weekend-news-in-brief-top-stories-for-september-5-2021 

Czech President sides with Prime Minister in dispute with his son

Czech President Miloš Zeman has expressed solidarity with Prime Minister Andrej Babiš after he was publicly confronted by his son at an election event in Ústí nad Labem on Thursday. The younger Babiš came to the opening of the ANO election campaign and caught his father, the Czech Prime Minister, by surprise. Babiš Jr. announced that he passed psychological tests that confirmed his mental health, and that he wants to testify against his father in the ongoing Stork's Nest case.

In a statement released on Twitter by spokesman Jiří Ovčáček, Zeman said he believes that Babiš Jr. is mentally ill, and the incident was organized by film director Vít Klusák. "Zeman has denounced the activities of Klusák, who organizes the conduct of the mentally ill son of the Czech prime minister," Ovčáček has tweeted. 

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https://www.politico.eu/article/campaign-launch-gone-wrong-czech-pm-confronted-by-his-son-who-wants-to-testify-against-his-father/ 

BY LOUIS WESTENDARP, September 2, 2021 

Prime Minister Babiš is under investigation for allegedly misusing EU subsidies. 

Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš had to deal with an angry voter on the campaign trail, his own son.

"I wish you good luck with your campaign to fool the Czech nation," Andrej Babiš Jr. told his father Thursday during a campaign stop in Ústí nad Labem ahead of October's election, according to local media.

The younger Babiš then made clear he wishes to testify against his father in an EU subsidy fraud investigation. The prime minister has in the past claimed his son cannot testify as he "is mentally ill. He takes medication. He has to be supervised."

"I have just left a psychologist's surgery and I have a court expert. How do you feel when you see me? Why did you hurt me?" said Babiš Jr.

The two have been at loggerheads for years. In 2018, the senior Babiš denied allegations that his son was kidnapped in order to prevent him from testifying in the investigation, which is looking into charges that the PM illegally accepted €2 million in EU subsidies related to a farm and convention center called Stork's Nest. He has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, calling the charges politically motivated.

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Andrej Babiš Jr confronts his father at ANO campaign launch 

The launch of the ruling ANO party's campaign for this October's Czech election was meant to put Prime Minister Andrej Babiš front and center. But attention was diverted by a remarkable confrontation between the Prime Minister and his own son, who declared a desire to testify against his father in the Stork's Nest police investigation.

"The drawing of EU subsidies is a major priority for us, and we therefore take all reprimands and warnings very seriously," Regional Development Minister Klára Dostálová said.

From the last comprehensive statement, which Babiš junior shared on his twitter, there is a chill running down his spine at the idea that everything a young man describes should be pure truth."This is a scary read. For parents who love their children, especially. We probably won't find it on the MAFRA title pages, so at least we'll share it on the net. A person who defends his reputation against superiority deserves it ... " wrote to reference the junior's text Miroslav Kalousek, one of the biggest opponents of Prime Minister Babiš, today a loud supporter of his son. And the tragic family situation is painful for the junior, as evidenced by his sad sigh over the childhood photo: "Betrayal does not come from enemies, but from those you trust the most."

Investigated. Police want the prosecutor to send Babis to court over Stork's Nest 

https://www.forum24.cz/vysetreno-policie-chce-po-statnim-zastupci-aby-poslal-babise-k-soudu-kvuli-capimu-hnizdu/ 

MICHAL ZÁVADA, 31. 5. 2021 

Andrej Babiš should go to court in the matter of the alleged Stork's Nest subsidy fraud. This is the result of the investigation by police detectives for the second time. Today they handed over a file with a proposal for indictment to the prosecutor.

"Today, in the case referred to in the media as the 'Stork's Nest case', the case file was submitted to the supervising prosecutor together with the police's proposal to file charges," confirmed Aleš Cimbala, spokesman for the Prague City Prosecutor's Office.
The submitted case file has a length of over 34 000 pages and the prosecutor will now examine it in order to decide whether to file an indictment, discontinue the prosecution or handle the case differently.
"In view of the sensitive public interest, society will be informed of the manner in which the case will be handled through the public media. During the study of the case file and the processing of the case by the prosecutor, we will not provide further and more detailed information," added Aleš Cimbala.
The extensive case file has been brought back to the table by prosecutor Jaroslav Šaroch, who has already stopped the case once. He must now decide whether Babiš will go to court or whether he will drop the investigation into the alleged subsidy fraud again.
The case involves CZK 50 million that Babiš was supposed to have obtained by trickery in the form of a subsidy for the construction of his luxury country residence. The money was intended for small companies to help them compete with large holdings such as Agrofert. Babiš had the farm, which stood on the site of today's Stork's Nest taken out of Agrofert's ownership, got the subsidy, built it, and when it was completed, the farm was again included in the prime minister's catalogue of companies.
This is not the only suspicious operation related to the Stork's Nest. The police also investigated the fact that Agrofert companies had commissioned hundreds of millions of crowns worth of advertising on the farm. Critics say this may have been a targeted reduction of company profits in order to pay lower taxes.
One branch of the case also involved Andrej Babiš Jr.
In Babiš Jr. words, Babiš Sr. himself implicated him in the case by having him sign some documents on the case and then having him kidnapped to Crimea.

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"Good only wins in Movies" says Andrej Babiš Jr. in an exclusive interview

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"The situation between the caretaker (Protopopov), the patient (me) and the doctor - who bares her teeth when confronted (Protopopova) is so intolerable that I am able to see my own grave / wheelchair or at least a medical problems from this time distance. I don't want to take medicine..." 

Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights

United Nations Office at Geneva

Geneva, Switzerland

Copy:

· President of Interpol Kim Jong-yang

· Vice-president of Interpol for Europe Šárka Havránková

· Ambassador of the Swiss Confederation in the CR Dominik Furgler

· Members of the Parliament and Senate of the CR

· Members of the European Parliament

· Organization A Million Moments for Democracy

· Czech and foreign media and public actors 

                                                                                                                                                4 March 2020

Dear All,

According to the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, which entered into force for the Czech Republic on 10 March 2017, I am addressing you as a Czech citizen with a request for assistance in the matter of the disappearance of Andrej Babiš Junior, born 1983, a Swiss citizen according to all available information.

I am concerned about the fate of Andrej Babiš, the son of the current Czech Prime Minister, Andrej Babiš. There is a reasonable suspicion that Andrej Jr. may be held by an organized group against his will in an unspecified place, under threaten to his health and life due to undesirable medicines or drugs. It is possible that the same applies to his mother, MUDr. Beatrice Babišová, as a result of the malevolent conduct of Andrei Babiš Sr., around whom there is a tangle of criminal relations, including unresolved deaths. We also remember the precedent from the post-revolutionary era and Babiš's business and political miliue, the kidnapping of the son of the Slovak former president Kováč to Austria and the tragedy of other people around the case (still unresolved). There is no indication of whether Junior is alive at all. And I do not rule out that maybe one day it could be reported that he "committed suicide".

The last known contact with him was made on 15 November 2018 via e-mail correspondence of reporters from the web portal seznam.cz, who after a long effort managed to find him a few days before in Switzerland and interview him.

https://www.seznamzpravy.cz/clanek/prulomove-svedectvi-v-kauze-capi-hnizdo-slonkova-a-kubik-vypatrali-zmizeleho-babisova-syna-60198 

Andrej Babiš Jr. described, among other things, the serious circumstances in his words of forced stay in the occupied Crimea in 2017 and futile attempts to contact the Czech police - who later closed the investigation of his complaint of kidnapping without contacting him personally. He said that his father wanted his disappearance because of the Stork Nest case, in which they were both accused of having been involved, that he was involuntarily held for 2.5 years under the full control of a Russian national, Petr Protopopov, who was also injecting medication for the recommendations of doctor Dita Protopopová (the wife of his "carer" who was the only one to diagnose "schizophrenia" and then started to move up the career ladder, also to unsuccessfully run for Parliament for Babiš's ANO party) and that he managed to escape to Switzerland from Protopopov by bus from Slovakia.

He also repeatedly asked Seznam reporters Sabina Slonková and Jiří Kubík for help in contacting the Czech police. Unfortunately, this did not happen despite the fact that immediately after broadcasting the reportage in the Czech Republic, Andrej Babiš Sr. went to his son in Geneva on 17 November 2018 (the Czech police did not protest, although it was possible to assume pressure or influence of the witness).

Since then, Andrej Jr. has stopped communicating. Babiš Sr. only handed over the friendly TV Nova channel a video, in which his ex-wife Beatrice Babišová calls on everyone to leave her son alone (he warned reporters that his father was putting pressure on his mother). However, Andrej Jr. is legally competent - or at least was at that time. We have no idea what has happened to his health since then. The Prime Minister ignores inquiries and has no interest in reassuring us that it is not a criminal organization to remove a witness to his criminal cases.

20 September 2019: Police officers made an administrative error in investigating the kidnapping of Babiš Jr. They received a disciplinary punishment ... The police did not contact Babiš Jr. personally or start a search for him. As police chief Jan Ptáček explained in mid-November last year, the police officers were in regular contact with his lawyer (NB.: The advocate for Babiš Jr. was also that of his father, Babiš Sr. !). According to an official record, they were content with the photo of Babiš Jr., who was supposed to stay with his mother in Bratislava and the current issue of newspapers. And then they dropped the case, which was just being checked by the General Inspectorate and the result is the actual punishment of the police.

https://www.irozhlas.cz/zpravy-domov/andrej-babis-mladsi-capi-hnizdo-premier-policie-cr-krym-ukrajina-unos-hnuti-ano_1908201011_gak 

23 September 2019: The finding of Seznam News from November 2018 on the intentional removal of the son of the Czech prime minister to Russian-occupied Crimea took on a new dimension after the publication of the document of the dropping of the investigation in the Stork's Nest case... The words of the prosecutor Šaroch... can thus be considered as confirmation of the current knowledge that Babiš's son Andrej played the role of a White Horse in the case. Indeed, as he himself described it last fall in the investigative program Special Investigation... However, the investigation into the alleged abduction started again at the end of last year. And after the reporters of Seznam.cz covertly filmed Andrej Jr. in Geneva at the end of last year. He repeated the same sentence he had written to the police: I was kidnapped to the Crimea. I had to leave because my father needed it because of the Stork's Nest case.

https://www.seznamzpravy.cz/clanek/proc-musel-babisuv-syn-zmizet-na-krym-nova-informace-ze-sarochova-dokumentu-79148?dop-ab-variant=12&seq-no=1&source=hp 

3 February 2020: The plaintiff stopped the case of Babis's son in the Stork's Nest case. A spokesman for the Municipal Prosecutor's Office in Prague: "the act for which the prosecution was conducted is not a criminal offense and there is no reason to refer the matter..." The decision with Babiš Jr. only took place now, because Šaroch ruled out his case last year because he lives in Switzerland in the long term. While in the main branch of the case, which concerns, inter alia, his father, the plaintiff from the Municipal Prosecutor's Office in Prague decided already last summer. At that time Šaroch stopped the prosecution of Babiš and five other people - mainly members of his family. At the end of 2019, however, the Chief Prosecutor Pavel Zeman decided that the prosecution of the Czech Prime Minister and former member of the Stork's Nest member Jana Mayerová will continue... In connection with Andrej Babiš Jr., the police are investigating the case of the alleged abduction of the Prime Minister's son to the Crimea. That was to have taken place at the turn of 2017 and 2018. Investigators have not closed the case yet. The case hangs on the interrogation of Andrej Babiš Jr. The case was opened on the basis of testimonies published in Seznam Reports on the Special Investigation programme in November 2018.

https://www.seznamzpravy.cz/clanek/zalobce-zastavil-pripad-babisova-syna-v-kauze-capi-hnizdo-88113?utm_source=www.seznam.cz&utm_medium=sekce-z-internetu&fbclid=IwAR2bASCAtmiMe7yyIK210dsp008KfvKUT0Nsz3C7bsTSxma38OsxXGhrEiM 

5 February 2020

https://neovlivni.cz/vubec-prvni-rozhovor-s-andrejem-babisem-juniorem-o-otci-nemoci-a-kauze-capi-hnizdo/?fbclid=IwAR1JWATbeQ1dthf4r1d6wR4He6MRovd3WrePkvaItlefPLPDQmCWxYfafXs 

The fears of the fate of Andrej Jr., in addition to the above, further knowledge about what happened to him since 17 July 2015, when he was given notice in Travel Service as a pilot licensed for Boeing 737 aircraft placed under suspicious circumstances for 2 months to a psychiatric hospital, and then handed over by his father for 2.5 years under the supervision of the Russian bicycle dealer Protopopov.

The suspicion of unlawful activity against Andrej Babiš Jr. and possible violence against him is enhanced by his father's behaviour. He is being investigated by the Czech authorities and the European Commission (OLAF) for suspected economic crimes. Every day we can observe his effective attempts to influence the police and justice in the Czech Republic, manipulate information through the media he bought and misinformation released by government and other officials of various levels, appointed primarily by the ANO movement, which he is chairman of. It is certain that his son's testimony to the police in cases of kidnapping and misuse of European subsidies for the Stork's Nest farm can be fatal for him, as he can explain his serious crime.

Andrej Babiš Jr.  may also be uncomfortable for his father by knowing a lot about his father's past and his contacts, either from his own experience or from his mother (who lived with him during his cooperation with the STB and working in a foreign trade enterprise under socialist Czechoslovakia). This was reflected in the entire further post-revolutionary course of Babiš's business and entry into politics, see. unclear capital for business or its current associates. As you can see, the son is not indifferent to everything.

In addition to the above, I am convinced that, personally, Prime Minister Andrej Babiš Sr., as well as Czech President Milos Zeman, work in harmony with the Russian secret services to the detriment of the Czech Republic. Their criminal interests may also be the cause of the disappearance of Andrej Babiš Jr.

In October 2019 I turned to the Swiss Ambassador in Prague, see appendix 1 - petition with about 600 signatures and bland response by the ambassador.

I founded the FB profile under the pseudonym Bohdan Švarc and over the past two months I spent a lot of time searching for information from public sources that could explain more why we really need to worry about the fate of Andrej Babiš Jr. https://www.facebook.com/bohdan.svarc.98 

Studying the published references (there are also exceptions on FB to lighten the image of the tragic contemporary reality of my homeland), it can be convinced that these are facts confirming the above: Prime Minister Babiš today can with his many years improved literally mafia ways to destroy anyone in his path. Links with information directly related to Junior's case - see Appendix 2  (partly in English), and those that point to problematic conduct and ties of the Czech Prime Minister - see Appendix 3 (Russian ties, business history, etc., in Czech), Appendix 4 (liquidation of the competition and others, in Czech). The links are not perfectly sorted, I apologize.

Andrej Babiš Jr. has refused to submit to his father, and therefore is in all probability for at least five years in danger. Reportedly, he and his mother are in Switzerland, where he was summoned to be questioned by the police on 29 January 2020, but he apologized for an illness and did not appear. I do not know how much this information is based on truth. I would not be surprised if he was brought back to Russia, for example, and held there by force. One wants to believe that he might be under the protection of the Swiss government.

Among other things, it seems suspicious that, according to a police resolution with the charge in Prague on 29 September 2017, Andrej Babiš Jr. a national of the Slovak Republic.

https://www.irozhlas.cz/zpravy-domov/babis-kompletni-sdeleni-obvineni-dukazy-capi-hnizdo-dokument_1909300600_cib 

At the time that he said he was forced to stay in the Crimea, after his previous stays in Kaliningrad, Moscow, and subsequently Kryvoi Rog in Ukraine at his new girlfriend's Yelizaveta, admiring Putin's regime. He was introduced to her by Protopopov in the Crimea and he supposedly lives with her in Switzerland. It is suspected that she is a collaborator of the Russian secret services. He was supposed to be in Kryvoi Rog according to the photos published by Yelizaveta on social networks and at Christmas 2017, and according to the email sent to the Czech police on 5 January 2018, when he wrote: "I am awaiting an involuntary psychiatric intervention. My father needed me to disappear during the Stork's Nest case". Three days later, 8 January 2018, this electronic message came to the Czech police from there a second time.

https://www.irozhlas.cz/zpravy-domov/andrej-babis-mladsi-pritelkyne-krym-e-mail-petr-protopopov_1811291020_ako  .

In 2018, however, his father referred to him as a Swiss citizen, apparently for more than 10 years.

https://www.denik.cz/z_domova/andrej-babis-muj-syn-ma-svycarske-obcanstvi-vic-nez-deset-let-20181119.html?fbclid=IwAR09haou3RKKN78P1Mbw6IGuOl5YvKH6t0oWTyCkiIuBsaV3AQChP-U3sYA  .

Given that Slovakia does not allow dual citizenship in cases like this, this fact is very strange. Like many others mentioned in Internet links, e.g. in English and German (the Czech are of course more detailed).

The Swiss press also stated that Andrej Babiš Jr. has been a Swiss citizen since childhood.

https://www.derbund.ch/ausland/europa/mein-sohn-muss-geschuetzt-werden/story/11791970 

In November 2018, the Swiss authorities stated that they did not intend to investigate the kidnapping, that the Czech Republic, the country in which it had happened, should investigate it. That they would refuse to investigate the abduction of their own citizen wherever it happened? If Junior was a Slovak, why was the Czech police dealing with the announcement? By the way, according to Protopopov's statement, he went with Junior to Slovakia, where he stayed with his mother for a few days (was she, like him, under constant supervision when the son did not turn to her or the Slovak police for help?), then to Vienna, by air to Moscow and then to the Crimea. According to Swiss logic, from which country should he have been kidnapped?

https://www.echo24.cz/a/Sj8Rb/pripad-babise-ml-musi-resit-cesi-vzkazala-svycarska-policie?fbclid=IwAR2P0ob_vBuIKiVTAZARfRH6dDXOFvbzAlkDemIgiKMzm4h3kwKsMh4Z764 

There are so many contradictions in its history and their severity so high that there is nothing left to do but ask you for help.

Of course, it is not important to know where Andrej Babiš Jr. is, if he himself does not wish to disclose such information.

However, I would also like to ask you on behalf of many other fellow citizens to be assured that he is not being held under pressure as a hostage or an unwanted witness somewhere, subjected to mental and physical abuse, as he said when he was in the hands of Petr Protopopov.

And that he is free to testify to the police about his kidnapping in the Crimea, etc., as he himself asked.

His father does not answer his daily questions, even via social networks, and the Czech authorities are silent. A young man with an attractive profession to fulfil his dreams, the son of the Prime Minister of one of the countries of the European Union simply disappeared after complaining about his father's mafia behaviour.

4 February 2020, Sabina Slonková: The Dark Story of AB: Who is interested in Andrej Babiš Jr. never speaking again?... In fact, it may be better for the Prime Minister to leave a shadow of suspicion that he is involved in the kidnapping of his son than to have black and white in a police report.

https://www.seznamzpravy.cz/clanek/sabina-slonkova-temny-pribeh-ab-88309?utm_source=www.seznam.cz&utm_medium=sekce-z-internetu&fbclid=IwAR2Aywdi3CWm-hIhOnbIFeINRGANoCw5Ezk12_UqQsS72KpvWNK44O-5Rss 

10 February 2020, Reporters of Czech TV: Klecany - Crimea - Geneva

https://www.ceskatelevize.cz/ivysilani/1142743803-reporteri-ct/220452801240006  

(see English translation - Appendix 2)

As I stated in the petition to the Swiss ambassador to Prague, I apologize for using the pseudonym. I am not afraid of it, but it is a caution (although it is only minimal protection, Facebook already let me know that they know who I am). I have had a serious experience of my own with Babiš's people (like many others) after pointing out his criminal practices.

Regards,

Bohdan Švarc

svarcbohdan@gmail.com

Appendix 1 

https://www.change.org/p/velvyslanec-%C5%A1v%C3%BDcarsk%C3%A9-konfederace-v-%C4%8Dr-%C5%BE%C3%A1dost-velvyslanci-%C5%A1v%C3%BDcarska-o-vyj%C3%A1d%C5%99en%C3%AD-k-p%C5%99%C3%ADpadu-andreje-babi%C5%A1e-ml-v-co-nejkrat%C5%A1%C3%AD-dob%C4%9B

                                                                                                                                                             November 28, 2019

Mr. Dominik Furgler

the Ambassador of the Swiss Confederation in the Czech Republic

Dear Sir,

Allow me, please to ask the Swiss Confederation authorities for commenting on the case of Andrej Babiš jr. who (hopefully) lives with his mother in your country, and it is uncertain whether it is voluntarily or not. 

He has asked publicly for help several times in various forms, and it is clear that something terrible and illegal is happening with him. The fact that his father, Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš sr., publicly described him as a schizophrenic, is perhaps the least problematic thing.

In my socialist childhood, Switzerland was associated with something very pleasant, the taste of fantastic Tuzex (the type of luxury shop) cheeses and, above all, chocolate with a picture of a laughing cow and the sunny Alps. It was then without massive advertising, because comrades did not allow us to pamper too often, so the experience was all the more intense. 

To make the goodness of the capitalists bitter, our brains were bombarded with information about evil Swiss bankers hiding the stolen possessions of the martyred Jews.

We children could not cope with such contradictions, and the tangible reality of chocolate thankfully let us not think about it.

The Pavlov's reflex remained long in the adulthood, so the sound of the word "Switzerland" still sounded somehow chocolate. And more, after 1989, we registered the efforts of Swiss banks to come to terms with the past and compensate some of the families affected by the war.

In a later presence, however, other, not so chocolate rumours began to appear, such as hiding the money of Russian and other oligarchs and dictators in Swiss banks. However, it is difficult nowadays for an ordinary mortal to judge the extent and truthfulness of most of the information transmitted, and chocolate still had a chance to stay on top of the things.

The first doubts arose when current Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš sr. justified the acquisition of his enormous property thanks to the capital assistance of his (several months) classmates from the Swiss grammar school, but he kept his friends secret.

The Swiss press community kept silence, which was not so easy to understand, unlike the (neutral) government. But so be it - at that time they might have thought it was just another cox-comb´s money, such were arising more than much in the Eastern Bloc.

Today, there is much more in the game - and the silence from the Swiss Alps is more than menacing.

Andrej jr. (let's not make a fool of him, it is clear from the video that he is not) describing his involuntary journey to Russia and Ukraine here:

https://www.seznamzpravy.cz/clanek/prulomove-svedectvi-v-kauze-capi-hnizdo-slonkova-a-kubik-vypatrali-zmizeleho-babisova-syna-60198 

including a "fishing trip" to the occupied Crimea in the company of Petr Protopopov. More here:

https://www.irozhlas.cz/zpravy-domov/petr-protopopov-dita-protopopova-kauza-capi-hnizdo-agrofert-andrej-babis-mladsi_1811132010_tec 

About the engagement of his wife, a psychiatrist Dita Protopopova here:

https://neovlivni.cz/povysila-presto-ze-vysetrovani-unosu-syna-premiera-neskoncilo/ 

About abduction announcement, not investigated by the Czech police, here:

https://www.reflex.cz/clanek/zpravy/96056/vysetrovani-udajneho-unosu-andreje-babise-mladsiho-na-krym-jde-do-karneho-rizeni.html 

About the trip of his father - Czech Prime Minister, who just made a flight to Switzerland to chat and play chess with his son (after publishing the above video), here:

https://www.forum24.cz/nechtel-by-se-babis-zase-stavit-za-synem-na-sachy-uz-se-dlouho-nevideli/ 

About the silence of the Czech police and the judiciary about influencing a witness here:

https://www.euro.cz/politika/statni-zastupci-ze-by-babis-ve-svycarsku-ovlivnoval-sveho-syna-toho-se-nebojime-1429659 

About the Swiss silence here:

https://www.seznamzpravy.cz/clanek/ctvrt-roku-po-vybusne-zpovedi-babise-juniora-nedobytna-pevnost-svycarsko-66025 

Although Andrej jr. asked for help and questioning by the police, disappeared after the chess game with his father.

Dear Ambassador,

could you imagine what would happen to us, Czech citizens, for some reason uncomfortable with the Prime Minister Babiš (and some of them are already happening), when he dares such treatment of his own son and continues without consequences?

Swiss silence here does not have the taste of chocolate, but rather the taste of Czech special smelly cheese "tvaruzhek". And this smell is really difficult to ventilate, even in the Alps.

Maybe Babiš s. did play a game with his wealthy classmates, or some of their suitably influential classmates during his chess tour to your country, and that's why the silence?

As a result, the case of Andrej Babiš jr. appears similar to the appalling history of Latifa, the daughter of the Dubai ruler. Both are victims of their father.

If it is in fact a help of your country to Andrej Babiš jr. as a Swiss citizen, please let us know - the Czech citizens - in some possible way (maybe he has a cogent reason to hide from his father). If nothing else, at least we will know that Switzerland is not a participant in this organized crime.

https://www.blesk.cz/clanek/zpravy-politika/577599/zahadna-cesta-babise-ml-na-krym-vylet-nebo-unos-expert-rusove-nejsou-idioti.html 

I am trying to hope that the Swiss authorities will speak out early and in a form that avoids any doubt. I also appeal the representatives of public life not remain indifferent to the fate of Andrej Babiš jr.

Please, do not regard profane the use of a pseudonym (a character of an infinite TV series that reminds me of Andrej Babiš sr.), I do it for a serious reason. I believe that the content of this communication is more important than its author.

Yours faithfully,

Bohdan Švarc  

+ 594  signatures

  Tomáš Goláň - Senator (on  Facebook)

November 29, 2019

The only thing that really astounded me about the stopping the prosecution of the Prime Minister is the reality that the facts of the crime were not sufficiently established because the key witness, Andrej Babiš j., was not heard. Against this background, the prosecution should be resumed, as this is a fundamental misconduct!

If you agree, please support this petition!

  The reply of the Ambassador:

 _EDA-REP Prague  prague@eda.admin.ch 

11.12.2019

Sehr geehrter Herr Svarc

Mit Interessen habe ich Ihre Mitteilung vom 28. November 2019 zur Kenntnis genommen und nehme dazu wie folgt Stellung.

Jede sich in der Schweiz befindende Person kann sich an die zuständigen Dienste (Krankenhäuser, Polizei, Sozialdienste usw.) wenden, um falls nötig angemessene Unterstützung zu erhalten. Dies gilt auch für Herrn Andrej Babis Junior, sollte er dies wünschen.

Was die gemachten Vorwürfe angeblicher Straftaten gegen Herrn Andrej Babis Junior betrifft, so stehen die zuständigen schweizerischen und tschechischen Justizbehörden in Kontakt.

Mit freundlichen Grüssen.

Unofficial translation:

Dear Mr. Švarc,

I noted with interest your statement of 28 November 2019 and would like to comment on it subsequently.

Any person living in Switzerland can contact the appropriate places (hospitals, police, social services, etc.) to receive appropriate assistance. This also applies to Mr Andrej Babiš junior if he wished. As regards the allegations of alleged crimes against Mr Andrej Babiš Jr., the competent Swiss and Czech judicial authorities are in contact.

With friendly greetings

Embassy of Switzerland in the Czech Republic

Pevnostní 7, 162 01 Prague 6

Tel.: +420 220 400 633

Fax: +420 224 311 312

dominik.furgler@eda.admin.ch 

www.eda.admin.ch/prag

My response (in Czech): 

https://www.facebook.com/bohdan.svarc.98/posts/117847189692329

Appendix 2 

https://www.ceskatelevize.cz/porady/1142743803-reporteri-ct/220452801240006/video/749737 

February 10, 2020

VIDEO

Scenario of the program "Reporters of the Czech Television"

Studio:

Andrej Babiš Jr., the most dramatic part of the "Čapí hnízdo" (Stork's Nest) case. The interrogation of a key witness who has never been interviewed was closed by a state prosecutor last week.

Marek WOLLNER, presenter

--------------------

You're watching Cases and Reports in the ČT Reporters programme. Good evening. Andrej Babiš Jr. - the most dramatic part of the "Čapí hnízdo" (Stork's Nest) case.

Klecany - Crimea - Geneva

Marek WOLLNER, presenter

--------------------

It was a very strange story, which ended last week when the state prosecutor Jaroslav Šaroch closed the case. After two and a half years he stopped criminal proceedings against Andrej Babiš Jr. who was never even interviewed by the police. The entire process was fairly involved - from the National Mental Health Institution in Klecany, through the Ukrainian war zone in the company of his psychiatrist's husband, to his escape to Switzerland. A dramatic story of a man who was dragged into the Čapí hnízdo case by his own father Andrej Babiš who is the current Prime Minister of the Czech Republic - as told by reporter Michael Fiala.

Andrej Babiš Jr., son of the Prime Minister A. Babiš, Special investigation, Seznam News

--------------------

I suppose it wasn't my father's idea to have me transported to Crimea - it was Protopopov's.

Sabina SLONKOVÁ, investigative journalist, editor in chief of the Neovlivni.cz server

--------------------

And why did he take you there?

Andrej Babiš Jr., son of the Prime Minister A. Babiš, Special investigation, Seznam News

--------------------

He took advantage of my father's wish to remove me from public view.

Sabina SLONKOVÁ, investigative journalist, editor in chief of the Neovlivni.cz server

--------------------

And why did your father want that?

Andrej Babiš Jr., son of the Prime Minister A. Babiš, Special investigation, Seznam News

--------------------

Because of the Čapí Hnízdo case.

Ondřej GOLIS, reporter

--------------------

Hello Mr. State Prosecutor. I'm Ondřej Golis from Reporters. Could you please give me a comment on your last move in the Čapí hnízdo case?

Jaroslav ŠAROCH, State Prosecutor, State Prosecutor's Office for Prague

--------------------

No, please talk to the spokesman of the State Prosecutor's Office.

Ondřej GOLIS, reporter

--------------------

Why can't you comment on that?

Michael FIALA, editor

--------------------

Another turning point in the high-profile Čapí hnízdo case. State Prosecutor Jaroslav Šaroch has stopped criminal proceedings against Andrej Babiš Jr. , who is one of the key figures in the case as he could shed some light into the role played by his father, Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš. However, he was never interviewed.

Andrej BABIŠ, Prime Minister (ANO)

--------------------

Look, I don't want to comment on this just now. I'd just like to ask if those who dragged my family through the mud will ever apologize - but I don't really expect that.

Michael FIALA, editor

--------------------

In the well-known Čapí hnízdo case, charges have been brough against Andrej Babiš Sr. and 10 other individuals including Babiš's son as they were suspected of taking part in a subsidy fraud. The Čapí Hnízdo farm in central Bohemia, belonging to businessman Andrej Babiš pretended not to be not a part of Babiš's huge corporation Agrofert, but a small independent business. As such it was apply to apply for a €50 million subsidy from the EU.

Jiří KUBÍK, Investigative journalist, editor in chief of the Seznam Zprávy server

--------------------

To be recognized as a small or medium enterprise it needed shareholders who are not connected to Agrofert. In my view, these roles were fulfilled by Andrej Babiš's children from his first marriage, i.e. Andrej Babiš Jr. and daughter Adriana.

Andrej BABIŠ, Prime Minister (ANO)

--------------------

The Čapí hnízdo farm was, at that time, owned by my two adult children and my partner's brother, who held the share that my two younger children and my partner would have had.

Sabina SLONKOVÁ, investigative journalist, editor in chief of the Neovlivni.cz server

--------------------

The whole idea of finding Andrej Babiš Jr. Started when we found out that he is the key person in the entire Čapí hnízdo subsidy case.

Sabina SLONKOVÁ, investigative journalist, editor in chief of the Neovlivni.cz server

--------------------

But you never had anything to do with the Čapí hnízdo farm. How could you be prosecuted?

Andrej Babiš ML., syn premiéra A. Babiš, Zvláštní vyšetřování, Seznam Zprávy

--------------------

I have read that I did have something to do with it.

Sabina SLONKOVÁ, investigative journalist, editor in chief of the Neovlivni.cz server

--------------------

And did you or not?

Andrej Babiš ML., syn premiéra A. Babiš, Zvláštní vyšetřování, Seznam Zprávy

--------------------

Technically speaking, yes. It was in the newspapers but I don't want to speak about it.

Jiří KUBÍK, investigative journalist, editor in chief of the Seznam Zprávy server

--------------------

We knew that the Czech police never interviewed him [Andrej Babiš Jr.]. We also knew that he was hiding in an unknown place as he couldn't be found at any of his known addresses, including those in the Czech Republic. The neighbours claimed that they hadn't seen him for a long time, so we were trying to find other places where he could be staying, both in the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

Sabina SLONKOVÁ, investigative journalist, editor in chief of the Neovlivni.cz server

--------------------

So Bratislava is out of the question, isn't it?

Jiří KUBÍK, investigative journalist, editor in chief of the Seznam Zprávy server

--------------------

It looks that way, we don't know about other possible addresses there. We tried one where we thought we could have found him.

Sabina SLONKOVÁ, investigative journalist, editor in chief of the Neovlivni.cz server

--------------------

Give me a call if he opens the door to you.

Jiří KUBÍK, investigative journalist, editor in chief of the Seznam Zprávy server

--------------------

I'll let you know. We didn't have any phone number we could have called and prepared them for our visit, so we literally just rang the bell and knocked on the door.

Sabina SLONKOVÁ, investigative journalist, editor in chief of the Neovlivni.cz server

--------------------

Hello Mrs. Babišová. Can we talk to you for a while?

Beatrice BABIŠOVÁ, Andrej Babiš's ex-wife

--------------------

Hello.

Sabina SLONKOVÁ, investigative journalist, editor in chief of the Neovlivni.cz server

--------------------

We are her because you sent an email from Ukraine.

Michael FIALA, editor

--------------------

Andrej Babiš Jr. sent an email from Ukraine to the Czech Police in January 2018.

Andrej Babiš Jr. , the son of Prime Minister A. Babiš, Special Investigation, Seznam News

--------------------

I was abducted to Crimea. At the moment I'm at my girlfriend's place in Ukraine. I'm afraid that I may undergo some psychiatric treatment against my will. My father needed me to disappear until the Čapí hnízdo case settles.

Andrej Babiš Jr. , the son of Prime Minister A. Babiš, Special Investigation, Seznam News

--------------------

I think that it wasn't my father's idea to send me to Crimea. It was his [Protopopov's] idea.

Michael FIALA, editor

--------------------

Andrej Babiš Jr. is talking about the man who accompanied him to Crimea.

Andrej Babiš Jr., the son of Prime Minister A. Babiš, Special Investigation, Seznam News

--------------------

He abused his position as my carer.

Jiří KUBÍK, investigative journalist, editor in chief of the Seznam Zprávy server

--------------------

Mr. Protopopov?

Sabina SLONKOVÁ, investigative journalist, editor in chief of the Neovlivni.cz server

--------------------

So you never took Andrej Babiš Jr. anywhere?

Petr PROTOPOPOV, businessman

--------------------

I refuse to comment, it's none of your business.

Andrej BABIŠ, Prime Minister (ANO)

--------------------

That's an impudent lie, my son was never abducted. Unfortunately, he's an ill man.

Jiří KUBÍK, investigative journalist, editor in chief of the Seznam Zprávy server

--------------------

Yes, I remember him talking about some health issues. He was also talking about being treated in Geneva, and that the treatment he's getting there is much better than Dr. Protopopov's methods.

Ondřej GOLIS, reporter

--------------------

Did you ever investigate Mr. Andrej Babiš Jr.'s health?

Jaroslav ŠAROCH, State Prosecutor, State Prosecutor's Office for Prague

--------------------

No, please talk to the spokesman of the State Prosecutor's Office.

Jiří KUBÍK, investigative journalist, editor in chief of the Seznam Zprávy server

--------------------

The Protopopovs were people who - you could see - he didn't want to remember, they were connected with some very negative experience for him [Andrej Babiš Jr.].

Andrej Babiš Jr. , the son of Prime Minister A. Babiš, Special Investigation, Seznam News

--------------------

In Ukraine, he [Protopopov] told me: "Your father and I will do everything we can to keep you locked away". So I called the police.

Andrej BABIŠ, Prime Minister (ANO)

--------------------

He just went on Holiday to Russia with a guy who was taking a good care of him and I'm really grateful to him, of course.

Michael FIALA, editor

--------------------

Petr Protopopov is not a healthcare worker, he's a businessman, who was also employed in the Agrofert company that belongs to Andrej Babiš Sr.

reporter

--------------------

So you don't know if that villa belongs to Mr. Babiš Jr.?

Petr PROTOPOPOV, businessman

--------------------

I have no idea.

reporter

--------------------

Are you sure?

reporter

--------------------

So you don't know who's the owner of the place where you live?

Petr PROTOPOPOV, businesman

--------------------

I don't know and I have nothing more to say.

Andrej Babiš Jr., the son of Prime Minister A. Babiš, Special Investigation, Seznam News

--------------------

Dita, the wife of Protopopov told me: "you have a choice. Either we lock you up here in a psychiatric hospital or you can go on a holiday.

Michael FIALA, editor

--------------------

Dita Protopopov is a psychiatrist in whose care Andrej Babiš Jr. was at that time.

Sabina SLONKOVÁ, investigative journalist, editor in chief of the Neovlivni.cz server

--------------------

It's clear that one of the last people who spoke to him [Andrej Babiš Jr.] was Dr. Dita Protopopová. She issued a certificate for the police that her client is unable to be interrogated.

Jiří KUBÍK, investigative journalist, editor in chief of the Seznam Zprávy server

--------------------

It's her, still hanging out there.

Sabina SLONKOVÁ, investigative journalist, editor in chief of the Neovlivni.cz server

--------------------

Yes, it's her.

Dita PROTOPOPOV psychiatrist, polling station

--------------------

Hello, my name is Dita Protopopov and I'm a leading candidate for ANO for this year's local elections in Prague 8. I'm a medical doctor and, apart from helping my patients for 14 years, I'm actively working on the improvement of mental health care in the Czech Republic.

Michael FIALA, editor

--------------------

Since providing the report on Andrej Babiš Jr.'s state of health, Dr.Dita Protopopov has started working for the ministry of health, which is controlled by the ANO political movement, and she is also a secretary of the government's mental health committee, which is chaired by Prime Minister Andrej Babiš Sr. We asked her what role she played in the Andrej Babiš Jr. case.

Dita PROTOPOPOV, psychiatrist, polling station

--------------------

I have a duty of confidentiality and that hasn't been lifted by a court, nor by anyone else, so, while I'd love to explain the entire situation, I'm not allowed to.

Reporter

--------------------

Don't you see it as a conflict of interests - you provided the report on Andrej Babiš Jr.'s state of health and then started working for the government led by the father of your patient?

Dita PROTOPOPOV, psychiatrist, polling station

--------------------

I'm not allowed to disclose anything about my patients and my relationship with them, however what I do for the government and the Ministry of Health has absolutely nothing to do with my clinical practice.

Jiří KUBÍK, investigative journalist, editor in chief of the Seznam Zprávy server

--------------------

Her role in this case was absolutely obvious. The report was issued to prevent her patient Andrej Babiš Jr. from being interrogated by the police.

Andrej Babiš Jr., the son of Prime Minister A. Babiš, Special Investigation, Seznam News

--------------------

"It all lasted a really long time. He was renting flats, held me in Sevastopol and then in Yalta. I was there against my will and it was really unpleasant. When we returned to Europe and I got to Slovakia, I managed to escape to Switzerland by coach. Here I have a new doctor and I finally got rid of my quote-carer-unquote who mentally abused me. At the moment I'm taking some pills but there are no injections. I wish you a nice day".

Jiří KUBÍK, investigative journalist, editor in chief of the Seznam Zprávy server

--------------------

The last communication with Andrej Babiš Jr. that we recorded and published was in November 2018. It was before his father visited him, and Andrej Babiš Jr. then asked us by email to contact the Czech police as he wanted to report his abduction to Crimea. That was it as on the next day his father visited him in Geneva.

Reynolds KORANTENG, presenter

--------------------

Did you try to persuade your son to change some of his decisions?

Andrej BABIŠ, Prime Minister (ANO)

--------------------

Of course not, we didn't even speak about it. We played chess together. However, when I met him, I tried to explain what exactly was going on, as the press have been watching us for a long time. They created the entire case and tried to cause a conflict between father and son. So explained it all but he's still convinced that his trip to Russia was organized against his will.

Jiří KUBÍK, investigative journalist, editor in chief of the Seznam Zprávy server

--------------------

And then the communication ended, there's been silence since.

reporter

--------------------

Do you have an explanation for that?

Jiří KUBÍK, investigative journalist, editor in chief of the Seznam Zprávy server

--------------------

Well, it's quite obvious. Andrej Babiš simply told his son (who he normally has no contact with) and his ex-wife (who he also has no contact with) that they should keep their mouths shut.

Beatrice BABIŠOVÁ, Andrej Babiš's ex-wife

--------------------

I demand that Ms. Slonková and Mr.Kubíka, who after a month came to our home again on the 16th of November 2018, refrain from harassing us as we will no longer talk to them.

Michael FIALA, editor

--------------------

Last September State Prosecutor Jaroslav Šaroch stopped criminal proceedings against Andrej Babiš Sr. and five more persons accused of participating in the Čapí hnízdo case.

reporter

--------------------

Can I ask you for a short interview? Could you please explain what change in the case influenced your decision?

Jaroslav ŠAROCH, State Prosecutor, State Prosecutor's Office for Prague

--------------------

I won't explain anything to you.

Beatrice BABIŠOVÁ, Andrej Babiš's ex-wife

--------------------

Our judicial system is independent and I'm glad of the outcome.

Michael FIALA, editor

--------------------

But this wasn't the end of it. The decision of the State Prosecutor for Prague to stop criminal proceedings against all those involved in the Čapí hnízdo case was re-examined by Chief State Prosecutor Pavel Zeman who found some substantial inconsistencies.

Pavel ZEMAN, Chief State Prosecutor

--------------------

Wrong interpretation of the evidence, the issue of the businesses' interconnection, incomplete interpretation of European legislation and associated case law and the question of assessing the subjective aspect, i.e. the extent of individual suspects' involvement.

Michael FIALA, editor

--------------------

For these reasons the Chief State Prosecutor renewed criminal proceedings against Andrej Babiš Sr. and Jana Mayerová, a manager of the ANO movement. Apart from these two, the only remaining person (out of the original 11), accused in the case was Andrej Babiš Jr. - until last week, State Prosecutor Jaroslav Šaroch intervened again.

Aleš CIMBALA, spokesperson, State Prosecutor's Office for Prague

--------------------

The supervising state prosecutor stopped the criminal proceedings, as Mr. Andrej Babiš Jr.'s actions were not classified as criminal activity.

From the email of Petr Topinka, Andrej Babiš Jr.'s solicitor.

--------------------

The criminal proceedings were stopped without interviewing Mr. Andrej Babiš Jr.

reporter

--------------------

Was there at least an attempt to interview him? Why won't you speak about it, Mr. State Prosecutor?

Jaroslav ŠAROCH, State Prosecutor, State Prosecutor's Office for Prague

--------------------

Because only the spokesperson gives information to the press.

reporter

--------------------

We would like to hear that from you

Jaroslav ŠAROCH, State Prosecutor, State Prosecutor's Office for Prague

--------------------

Good bye.

Aleš CIMBALA, spokesperson State Prosecutor's Office for Prague

--------------------

The police indeed tried to hold the interview, however the situation was complicated as Andrej Babiš Jr. was staying abroad at the time.

Michael FIALA, editor

--------------------

The decision to stop criminal proceedings against Andrej Babiš Jr. will be reviewed by the Chief State Prosecutor.

Petr MALÝ, spokesperson for the Chief State Prosecutor's Office

--------------------

After the review the State Prosecutor will either confirm the decision or dismiss it as unlawful within a three month period.

Michael FIALA, editor

--------------------

Even in the event that the Chief State Prosecutor confirms the end of criminal proceedings against Andrej Babiš Jr., it won't necessarily mean that he cannot be interviewed by the police in order to explain the role of his father in the case.

Petr TOMAN, solicitor

--------------------

We need to distinguish between two different sets of criminal proceedings. One is that against Andrej Babiš Jr. in which he figures as a suspect. The other one is that against Andrej Babišov Sr. In the latter, Andrej Babiš Jr. will definitely be interviewed as a witness.

Michael FIALA, editor

--------------------

However, Andrej Babiš Jr. can then refuse to give evidence as a witness.

Sabina SLONKOVÁ, investigative journalist, editor in chief of the Neovlivni.cz server

--------------------

From my observations over all these years, this story will be one of those that take a long time to reach some closure, but I believe that one day all the pieces will be put together succesfully.

https://paragraphos.pecina.cz/special/doc/pdf?Usneseni_OS-HB_21.7.2015-an.pdf 

Decree:

The District Court in Havlíčkův Brod ruled by JUDr. Josef Uchytil in the case of placed ██████████████, DOB. ████████, apartment ████████████████████████████, ██████████, that time located in Psychiatric hospital in Havlíčkův Brod, represented by a guardian for the case Mgr. Ing. Jindřiška Jiráková Ph.D. , attorney with the registered office at Smetanovo náměstí 279, 580 01, Havlíčkův Brod, with the participation of the Psychiatric Hospital in Havlíčkův Brod on the admissibility of admission to the Institute of Health Care

thus: Taking over the placed ██████████████, DOB ████████, to the Institute health care on 17.7.2015 occurred for legal reasons, which still exist.

Justification:

The psychiatric hospital in Havlíčkův Brod has notified the court of its admission placed in institutional care without his / her written consent. Placed was admitted on 17.7.2015. The District Court by its resolution of 20 July 2015, ref. 0 L 528 / 2015-2 initiated proceedings on the admissibility of a takeover placed in an institution and subsequently Resolution of 20 July 2015, Ref. 0 L 528 / 2015-4, appointed him a guardian for this procedure.

From the testimony of the attending physician, the court found that it was the patient's first hospitalization. He was brought handcuffed to bed by the ambulance with the assistance of the police and the highway police after being found on the D1 motorway as he stood there and behaved disproportionately. He spoke alternately Czech, English, Slovak, claimed to have a bomb in his car, claimed to be George Clooney, that he was Barak Obama, etc. He became restless and aggressive when the police tried to ID him. Upon admitting to a psychiatric hospital there was no meaningful contact with him, he shouted nonsense slogans or sentences, he resisted everything. There was a need for a short separation and sedation medications. This situation continued throughout the weekend when he was either negativistic and uncooperative or he shouted slogans such as holocaust, telepathy etc. He was treated with injected drugs for non-cooperation for the whole weekend. On Monday the situation moderated slightly, it was possible to perform a psychiatric examination, when it was found he is completely overwhelmed by diseased experiences such as hallucinations, delusions. He claimed to be influenced by telepathy that objects were moving on the highway D1. This is a serious disorder, psychosis. Drug intoxication was excluded by urine tests. At the request of a family to be transfered to the prestigious institute - the National Center of Mental Health in Prague, this morning he was transferred to the local department. The transfer had to be done with an assistance of two health brothers. The patient's condition remains ill, without the assumption that this situation would be adjusted within a few days and without adequate psychiatric treatments, the patient is now particularly dangerous to himself.

In making his decision, the judge also relied on the testimony placed before the senior court clerk, because he himself had no opportunity to hear the placed because he was transferred to the National Center of mental health in Prague before another court year by the request of pacient family. A senior court clerk found the communications with the placed partially problematic, he was constantly repeating the sentence in a foreign language despite the warning that he should speak Czech or Slovak. Place was claiming he is not treated as a human being when he cannot go where he wants. During the testimony, he got up and tried to leave the building but came back when he found it impossible. He warned the senior court clerk that his father was in charge of the region.

The patient may be hospitalized without his consent or in the case of a youth patient ora patient with limited legal capacity without the consent of the legal guardian if he or she threatens immediately and seriously themselves or their surroundings and show signs of, or suffer from, a mental disorder under the influence of an addictive substance, if the threat to the patient or his surroundings cannot be averted otherwise (Section 38 (1) (b) of Act No 372/2011 Coll., on health services and health care, conditions of their provision, as amended by Act no. No. 303/2013 Coll.), or its health requires both urgent care and does not allowgiving its consent (Section 38 (1) (c) of the cited Act).

By the evidence, the court considers that placed was admitted in the constitutionalcare for the condition described above, for which it is particularly dangerous to himself. This state lasts as of the date of the decision.

In the view of the above findings, the court concluded that patient was taken over in a health care institution without his written consent for the reason according to § 38 para. b) of the above-cited Act.

Learning: An appeal may be lodged against this resolution within 15 days from the date of its delivery. Written copy through the District Court in Regional Court in Hradec Králové.

In Havlíčkův Brod on 21 July 2015

For accuracy of execution: Michaela Aubrechtová

JUDr. Josef Uchytil, single judge

https://www.irozhlas.cz/zpravy-domov/andrej-babis-mladsi-unos-krym-kauza-capi-hnizdo-lecebna-havlickuv-brod_1811221234_tec 

District Police Directorate Prague 1

Criminal Police and Investigation Service

Department of General Crime

Search department

Help and protect

Prague January 13, 2018

Number of pages: 1

Official record

On January 13, 2018 at 10.11 am on the reach phone No .... I was contacted by ..., who informed me that the person of interest ... flew from Ukraine to Slovakia, to his mother. It was agreed that a reachable mobile phone will be given to a mother of the person of interest and she would make a contact. It was also agreed that the mother and her son would take a picture with the daily press and send the photo to the local station.

At 11.17 am I was contacted on reach phone from number ..., when the calling person introduced herself/himself as ..., and said that the son was with her ..... It was agreed that they take a picture together and they will send the picture to... @pcr.cz.

At 11.24 am the photo arrived to the mentioned email, where .....and ... are in the picture and there is the newspaper Blesk in the background.

Ms ... further stated that ... is at her place at the adress ...

The whole event was immediately reported to mjr.Bc. Vladimír Veselý, Head of the General Crime Department of the CPC Prague I. Subsequently, the investigation was closed and all measures were canceled.

Prepared by: por.Mgr.

Bartolomějská 6

110 00 Prague 1

www.policie.cz 

https://www.novinky.cz/domaci/clanek/protopopov-babise-jr-jsem-neunesl-staral-jsem-se-o-nej-jako-o-bratra-40255637 

November 15, 2018

Protopopov: I did not abduct Mr. Babiš Jr., I cared for him as if he was my own brother.

"I worked as an assistant to Andrej Babiš Jr. and cared for him as if he was my own brother. I'd never hurt him," says Mr. Petr Protopopov in an exclusive interview for Právo after Mr. Babiš Jr. accused him of holding him in Ukraine and Russia against his will.

How did you get the job as Andrej Babiš Jr.'s carer? And when did the symptoms of his illness actually start to show?

I'm not sure, you'd need to ask his father about that. The only thing I know is that his schizophrenia broke out in full on the 17th of July 2015, when Andy [Mr. Babiš Jr.] had an incident with the police when driving on the D1 motorway, after which he was escorted to the psychiatric ward of Havlíčkův Brod hospital and consequently moved to NUDZ, where my wife worked at the time.

Mr. Babiš Jr.'s version is that he stopped by a motorway rest area, the police came and he told them as a joke that he was George Clooney, upon which they handcuffed him and took him away.

The police version is that he he stopped the car by the D1 motorway because he thought that there was a bomb in his car. He didn't respond to police instructions and became very aggressive so the police had to subdue him. And because he was talking nonsense, they took him to the psychiatric ward, where my wife was at work that day. She admitted him to the hospital and that was the beginning of it all, as far as I know.

Mr. Babiš Senior asked my wife for help with his son's case and also asked her if she could find a suitable carer for him. I said I would give it a try, although at the time I had no idea if I was going to cope, it is not an easy task.

What was the exact nature of your job? As far as I know, you worked for Agrofert as a driver at that time.

Basically, it was all about providing support for Mr. Babiš Jr., keeping an eye on him and spending time with him. The job wasn't of a medical nature, it was just about getting Andy out of bed in the morning, taking him to the doctor's or to the office and then keeping him busy for the day. I'd call my role a personal assistant. In the first four months I was doing this job as a volunteer, then I got the driving job at Agrofert in January 2016.

Did you work as Mr. Babiš Jr.'s assistant for free?

Yes. Back then I was co-owned a bicycle business called "Cyklotonic" and I tried to involve Andy in my work. I wanted him to be doing something, not just lying in bed, because any activity would be bound to do him good. But then after two months I realized that he wasn't enjoying working for my firm and even just being there was not doing him much good.

So I turned my care for Andy into a full time job, since it was impossible to combine it with the business. And it also turned out that Andy enjoyed working for Agrofert much more.

Was your driving job just a front for your caring job, then? How much did you actually earn?

No, it wasn't just a front. I had a full time job at Agrofert which I was doing together with Andy. We delivered all sort of stuff, we were basically couriers. We worked about 7 or 8 hours a day but we actually spent much more time together, easily half the day, including weekends. As for my earnings, of course it wasn't a cleaner's pay - it took up a lot of my time, and Mr. Babiš Sr. paid me well. But if somebody says it was over 100 000 CZK then that was not the case.

How would you describe your relationship to Mr. Babiš Jr.?

He was like a stepbrother to me and it was definitely not just a job, if that's what you mean. I turned up every morning at 9 o clock to drag him out of bed. I had to make sure he looked normal - that he cut his nails, went to the hairdressers', didn't go out in a T-shirt when it was minus 10 or a ski jacket when it was plus 15.

His schizophrenia is a terrible illness. We would go to breakfast and then to work. There he would get tasks like delivering an envelope to a certain place or something along those lines. Then we had lunch, did some more work and in the evening we might for example go to a shisha bar. Andy enjoys smoking a shisha, sometimes he did it for 3 hours at a time.

I tried to take him for walks, or to play badminton, or go cycling or skiing, just to have some exercise, but it was very hard to persuade him. Then in the evening I took him back home.

Did he live with his mother at the time?

No, he lived on his own, in flat in central Prague.

How did he cope with that? You just described how you had to drag him out of bed.

To a certain extent, he was able to function, work and live. But if you left him on his own, after three days he would stop leaving the house and you'd have to kick the door in to get to him. He would get himself something to eat or go to the toilet, but he for example wouldn't take a shower because he said he didn't need to. Like he didn't need to clean his flat.

He needs someone to push him all the time... he'd have a drink of water but wouldn't make himself a cup of tea. During the time I knew him, he was often ill. He had the flu and also chickenpox, which he'd never had as a kid. And I had to say to him: Andy, you're ill, you have to go to the doctor, take your medicine.

Does he realize that he's mentally ill?

No, he's not aware of that. To many people he says that there's nothing the matter, that he's completely fine and it's all the fault of the police. I've heard him saying that loads of times.

Also, when somebody has an illness like that, their mental state varies and fluctuates. He had good days and bad days, sometimes he wouldn't leave his bed, other times he was more active. But I could see his condition was improving through being engaged in some work, and after some time he was able to work independently as a courier for Agrofert.

What about the trip to Moscow and Crimea and the alleged abduction that Babiš Jr. spoke about in a secret video?

I'll tell it in the order it happened. We left the EU together for the first time in spring 2016 for Kaliningrad. We have a lot of lovely pictures of the seaside, the local sights, even Andy in a submarine. It was a lovely 2 week holiday and after that we came back.

Then last year there was "1 CZK bonds" affair, then the election campaign and then then the Stork's Nest case was taken to court.

Reporters were harassing us literally on every corner and the pressure was enormous. Often there was a Seznam.cz agency car outside his apartment, there was always someone waiting for him and the press were chasing him wherever he went, to get a sensational article.

I just wanted to escape that hell until the situation calmed down, and I also I wanted to give Andy a break from it all.

Why did you choose Russia?

Because in Slovakia, for instance, everybody knows who Babiš is. So I took Andy to Russia again, in September 2017. We had to apply for visas, he signed the application himself. We went to Bratislava to see Andy's mum for a few days and then flew from Vienna to Moscow. We spent a few days there and then we headed for Crimea.

Why Crimea? Particularly after it was annexed by Russia.

You surely know that I'm not Czech - so from my point of view it isn't annexed territory, it's a part of Russia, just like Kaliningrad. And why Russia? Well, you know, I can only speak Czech and Russian, I wouldn't get by in any other language. We've been skiing in Austria together before, but not on our own.

What is more, I was concerned about what would happen if something went wrong, about being able to get immediate medical treatment. Whenever we were abroad, my wife made sure that he had psychiatric care, including Russia and Ukraine. If we went to the USA or Cuba and something happened, then I'd be lost.

Crimea is the only part of Russia where you get warm weather in September and, unlike for instance Sochi, Crimea is really beautiful and there's a lot to see and do there.

When our visa expired after a month, we had to return to the Czech Republic. We spent a few days there, applied for a three-month visa, and flew back to Crimea around the beginning of November, again via Vienna and again after visiting his mum in Bratislava. I don't remember the exact dates but it's all in my passport - I can provide evidence, including a lot of photos from the trip.

In Jalta we rented a huge flat with sea view. Andy met a girl there and they seemed to get on very well. His mental state improved quite significantly so I decided to spend some time with my own family, left Andy in the girl's care and flew back to the Czech Republic.

How did he meet her?

I introduced them.

I find it quite strange that you would leave Babiš Jr., who was in your care, alone with a young woman you had only known for two weeks.

I trusted her 100%, otherwise I wouldn't do that. After just 20 minutes of contact she was able to understand that Andy was different. For her, he was a nice boy who wasn't always easy to handle but she took him exactly as he was. A good friend of mine recommended this young lady to me, he knew that she had a ten-year-old son, and that she was reliable and so on.

I'm sorry but when you speak about a recommendation, it sounds like the woman was planted there on purpose...

Not at all, I got the contact from an old friend whom I completely trust.

And if you are alluding to secret services, then no, the guy is an ordinary businessman.

How about you? Are you an agent?

Of course not. I never had anything to do with any secret services, Russian or other.

The media say that I have a gun licence, but I have never fired a single shot in my life, I even don't know how. You don't need a gun to care for Andy, just nerves of steel.

OK let's get back to the events. You left Crimea for the Czech Republic last November to visit your family and then you returned to the peninsula?

Yes. Because Andy is only allowed to spend 90 days every 6 months in Russia, (the same applies to the Czech Republic), we had to leave the country.

Meanwhile the young lady, who was only in Crimea for work, returned to Krivoj Rog, a mining town in Eastern Ukraine, where her mother lives. Andy wanted to visit her so much but I had to tell him: Look, mate, Krivoj Rog isn't the promised land, it's Mordor - prisons, mine shafts, junkies... But nothing could convince him, he just wanted to go. So we got a car and set off.

Weren't you scared? To Eastern Ukraine by car?

You know, I wasn't at all happy about it. On the other hand, Andy is legally an independent person and as he really wanted to go, I decided we would manage somehow. At least, if something went wrong, I would be able to arrange medical care. So I set off from Prague and picked him up from his mother's place in Bratislava.

And why by car? Because it would be quite difficult to get there any other way. There are hardly any trains, because it's five or six hundred kilometres from Kyiv. I remember that it was before Christmas, so I spent Christmas there there came back for New Year.

Alone?

Yes. I arranged with Andy's girlfriend that she would call me if there were any problems. Also Andy's condition was getting worse and, given the rough atmosphere of Krivoj Rog, he started to suspect that his girlfriend and I were cheating on him behind his back. So I decide to leave.

Wait a minute, are you telling me that you left the son of the Czech Prime Minister on his own in a place like that without any security arrangements? He could have been abducted by anyone.

This is hard to explain but I was absolutely sure that he was safe there, and he wasn't alone, he was with his girlfriend. It may have been a different world but it wasn't dangerous there. Just after New Year I got a call from a lawyer who wanted to know where Andy was. I told him that he was in Ukraine with this girl, and asked what was going on. He told me that the guys from Bartolomějská Street [Prague Police headquarters] wanted me to explain some things.

The interrogation was fairly unpleasant because Andy, in one of his worse moments, had sent an email to the Prague CID in which he claimed that I had abducted him in Ukraine. So I was interrogated by the police at Bartolomějská street while Andy was in Krivoj Rog with his girlfriend.

The lawyer told me the only option was to bring Andy back as soon as possible. I boarded a plane to Kyiv, there I caught a taxi, picked up Andy from his girlfriend's place and I told him that there were some problems and that we had to go back to Prague. So we got back in the taxi, went to Kyiv and flew to Vienna.

From Vienna we went to Bratislava to see Andy's mother, and she sent a photo of Andy holding a fresh newspaper to the police. That was when I explained to him what the problem was and what I was being accused of, and asked him to come to Prague and explain it all. However he downright refused to do that, locked himself in his room and started throwing a huge tantrum. So the only thing I could do was to go to Prague on my own. And that was the last time I saw Andy - the 13th of January 2018.

So how did he end up in Switzerland?

I don't know, I wasn't there. From what I heard, Andy ran away from his mother's after just a few days and caught a coach to Switzerland.

He managed that?

When somebody has schizophrenia it doesn't mean they are mentally retarded. He can do a lot of things for himself when he wants to, but he often doesn't want to. He just needs some impulse to push him into action, in this case I guess it was fear. But when the impulse fizzles out, he becomes indifferent to everything again.

Do you know why Switzerland in particular?

As far as I know, he had lived and studied there, he knew the country. From Switzerland Andy contacted his mother who then came to visit him.

You don't think the fact that he has Swiss citizenship, and would be out of reach of the Czech Police there, played a role in his decision?

I don't think he realizes things like that, I think the main motivation really was fear, which was further intensified by his illness.

Mr. Babiš Jr. claimed it was you whom he feared.

To be honest, that makes me sad. I dedicated 2 and half years of my life to him and it cost me quite a lot of stress. I don't blame him, though, because I know that he is ill. I heard him say loads of times that he was going to kill me, or kill his father, or kill himself.

Now I'm in an awful situation where me and my entire family are being dragged through the media. But I don't blame Andy, because I know how terrible his illness is.

What about Mr. Babiš Jr.'s claim that you abducted him to Russia and Ukraine?

What I've told you should give you an impression. I never made him to do anything he didn't want to do, I never did him any harm. And abduct him to Russia? It's not at all easy to take somebody in a car, against their will, through multiple border controls outside the Schengen area. Why would I go to all that trouble when I could more easily have held him somewhere in Prague?

Maybe because you were born in Russia and have ties there?

I've been living in the Czech Republic for 17 years in all, I know this place much better than Russia.

Do you own any real estate or land in Russia or Crimea?

No, nothing at all.

How and why did you come to the Czech Republic?

I was 12 when my whole family moved in the early 90's. My father thought we would find a better future here than in Russia.

Did Mr. Babiš Jr.'s parents know about your trips to Russia and Ukraine?

The entire family knew. We stayed in touch with Mrs. Babiš, I have records of our correspondence. She knew about everything. And as I say before, we always flew from Vienna and many times we stayed at her place.

When you saw Babiš Jr. on the hidden camera footage, what did you think about the way he behaved?

Even the way he spoke and the blank stare were a clear sign of his illness. That must be obvious to everyone who comes into contact with him.

https://www.rferl.org/a/czech-ukraine-babis-kidnap/29628803.html 

November 29, 2018

Ukrainian Lover Of Czech PM's Son Tight-Lipped On Crimea Affair

By RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service

VIDEO

https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2019/02/07/wheres-babis-geolocating-the-alleged-father-son-kidnapping-mystery/?fbclid=IwAR2byMufkitkuBI8m1_3Buz359HHK6jtFW94ol-urnfryVnC04igdG6-LZg 

February 7, 2019

          Where's Babiš? Geolocating the Alleged Father-Son Son       

          Kidnapping Mystery 

By Christiaan Triebert. (He has investigated for Bellingcat since 2015 and runs several of Bellingcat's workshops for journalists and researchers across the world.)

https://www.forum24.cz/slysite-to-ticho-takhle-jsme-zapomneli-na-babise-juniora/?fbclid=IwAR0bl0M_9EkczSkbRW6psvj8s0vtpiNYnc0Hl38sk-vyALqGCJloYGpj_8o 

November 28, 2019

Do you hear the silence? That's how we forgot about Babiš junior

JOHANA HOVORKOVÁ, Chief editor of FORUM 24

When Sabina Slonková and Jiří Kubík issued a testimony of Andrej Babiš junior a year ago, that his father wanted to get rid of him so he could not testify in the Čapí hnízdo (stork nest) case, it seemed that the political scene would finally shake in its base. It was assumed that everyone will understand this is Andrej Babiš, the right one (which, incidentally, was staying in Palermo at that moment). How about today? Nothing is happening today. The doctor who was the part of the whole case, Dita Protopopovová, is advancing in her career. The Prime Minister is mocking us all. Why is that? Because the media are allowing it.

You know what would happen in some other country where the big newspapers, especially the tabloids, work normally? For example, in the UK, no one would not move away from Babiš junior´s apartment, especially after his father visited him and "played chess with him". They would interview childhood friends, mates, mother´s former colleagues from hospital, they would look for relatives and some of them would also look at what is in the garbage bins by the house. And nobody, really nobody would be ignorant about it.

We do not know today where Andrej Babiš junior is. Couple of days ago his case was mention again when Protopopov, who, along with her husband, a Russian bicycle salesman, helped to hide Andrej junior in Russian-occupied Crimea. But other than that, there is silence. How is it that Czech journalists do not ask what Babiš did with his son? Probably because their work is not as important to them as it should be. Because to antagonize the Prime Minister is simple and they don´t want the troubles. After all, this was recognized by the owner of Seznam website, Ivo Lukačovič, where the article was published, when he was openly threatened by the editor-in-chief of Babiš's MF DNES Jaroslav Plesl. In fact, nobody from the journalist community is being distant from this paper. On the contrary, the impression of normal journalism is created, so there is nothing to be surprised about.

We do not know what Andrej Babiš did with his son. We do not know what means he used to pressure his ex-wife, who was standing next to her son before, listened to his testimony and did not interfere with it. No one confronts Babiš' present wife Monica with questions what she says about how her husband's other children are treated despite she has two children with him alone. Is it really possible for Czech journalists to be so ignorant towards all that?

We only have a few big newsrooms that could really do this work. It is surprising that tabloid journalists don't do that, although it is in their job description. In fact, it is a sad example of the decline of Czech journalism and, in particular, the reason why the country is as it is. And why we just have to pray about the results of the European Commission's audits.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Czech_political_crisis  

2018 Czech political crisis started when Seznam News published an interview with son of Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš, Andrej Babiš Jr.

Babiš Jr. stated that his father's people kidnapped him in Crimea and kept him there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCSDhnqV_DA 

VIDEO

Andrej Babis: Czech Prime Minister denies son was kidnapped

   NOVEMBER 2018

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/13/czech-pm-andrej-babis-future-hangs-in-balance-after-sons-kidnap-claims 

Czech PM's future hangs in balance after son's kidnap claims

https://www.governmenteuropa.eu/andrej-babis-alleged-kidnap/91121/ 

Andrej Babiš associates allegedly kidnap son

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-13/billionaire-premier-faces-heat-over-son-s-crimea-abduction-claim 

Billionaire Czech Premier Faces Ouster Bid After Son's Abduction Claim

https://qz.com/1462606/czech-prime-minister-andrej-babis-allegedly-kidnapped-his-own-son-in-a-fraud-scandal/ 

Think US politics are bad? The Czech PM allegedly kidnapped his own son in a fraud scandal

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/11/czech-pm-faces-calls-step-fraud-scandal-allegations-181113165137743.html 

Czech PM faces calls to step down after fraud scandal allegations

https://www.rferl.org/a/czech-pm-babis-son-says-held-in-crimea-against-his-will/29598264.html 

Calls For Czech PM's Resignation As Scandal Flares Over Son's 'Abduction' Claim

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-46194329 

Andrej Babis: Czech PM denies son was kidnapped

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/son-s-kidnap-claims-and-fraud-case-pile-pressure-on-czech-leader-babis-1.3699097 

Son's kidnap claims and fraud case pile pressure on Czech leader Babis

Andrej Babis says 'mentally ill' son went voluntarily on Crimean holiday

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/prague-protests-andrej-babis-velvet-revolution-eu-fraud-stork-nest-a8639176.html 

Protesters in Prague hold third day of demonstrations demanding resignation of prime minister over fraud allegations

Populist Andrej Babis is accused of taking €2m from EU - then kidnapping own son to cover up crime

https://www.radio.cz/en/section/news/babis-son-remains-convinced-he-was-in-crimea-involuntarily 

BABIŠ: SON REMAINS CONVINCED HE WAS IN CRIMEA INVOLUNTARILY

https://www.radio.cz/en/section/curraffrs/affair-unlikely-to-disappear-any-time-soon-says-analyst-ahead-of-key-test-for-pm-babis 

AFFAIR UNLIKELY TO DISAPPEAR ANY TIME SOON, SAYS ANALYST AHEAD OF KEY TEST FOR PM BABIŠ

https://www.ridl.io/en/central-european-populists-haunted-by-kremlin-links/ 

Central European Populists Haunted By Kremlin Links

https://www.politico.eu/article/andrej-babis-czech-pm-babis-survives-no-confidence-vote-sparked-by-sons-kidnap-claims/ 

Czech PM Babiš survives no-confidence vote sparked by son's kidnapping claims

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/23/world/europe/andrej-babis-czech-republic.html 

Scandal Around Billionaire Prime Minister Leaves Czechs in Limbo 

https://www.irozhlas.cz/zpravy-domov/babis-prijem-hnuti-ano-dluhopis-agrofert-investice-svycarsko_1808170600_pla 

Jakub Troníček, 17.8.2018

Interest on koruna bonds and Swiss investments. Babiš earned over 107 million in half a year

The Prime Minister and head of the ANO movement, Andrej Babiš, had an income outside politics of roughly CZK 107 million in the first half of this year... more than CZK 17 million came from the Swiss private investment bank Vontobel. This is according to the asset overview that Babiš entered into the central register of notifications in accordance with the law.

It is not clear exactly what the Prime Minister received the money for from the Swiss bank. Babiš refused to explain his income in any way.

"I will not comment on it, I signed it, I fulfilled my legal obligation. I can't explain it to you because I don't deal with it. I have a financial adviser for that and I don't know that I have such income from such a bank. I sign a declaration of assets, that's all," Babiš told Radiožurnál. Previously, he had not responded to questions about the money from the Swiss bank sent via text message for several weeks.

Investments under the Alps

According to financial advisers contacted by Radiožurnál, the income from the bank is most likely due to the proceeds from securities managed by the bank. According to his asset declaration, Babiš has long held several shares in various investment or bond funds, as well as shares in some large multinational companies. Most of them are based, like Vontobel, in Switzerland.

"The prime minister is particularly fond of investing in Swiss companies and Swiss or Liechtenstein funds. He puts his money in gold or in confectionery or chocolate companies such as Nestlé. He invests in Schindler, a Swiss elevator manufacturer, Geberit, a Swiss bathroom ceramics manufacturer, or SGS, a Geneva firm that provides inspection or certification services. His other investment targets, transport firm Kühne and Nagel or pharmaceutical icon Roche, are also based in Switzerland," says Lukáš Kovanda, chief economist at Cyrrus.

Like his former companies in the Czech Republic, he has also invested in healthcare. He owns shares in a fund focused on modern medicine and related technologies.

According to Kovanda, Babiš's investment portfolio is also well prepared for a possible economic crisis. Other investment advisors interviewed also described it as safe and well-balanced. According to some of them, the handwriting of Swiss private banking is clearly visible.

Babiš may also have confidence in bank Vontobel because, according to earlier reports in the weekly Euro, Ladislav Dianiška worked there at least five years ago. That is, an acquaintance of his who worked with him in the former foreign trade company Petrimex.

Babiš also spent about a year in Switzerland in high school, when he stayed there with his parents in the 1970s. The company OFI, which owned part of Agrofert in the 1990s, was also from Switzerland. According to Babiš, his high school classmates were behind it.

   4.12.2018

https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/12/the-remarkable-scandal-threatening-to-topple-the-czech-prime-minister/ 

The remarkable scandal threatening to topple the Czech Prime Minister

   5.3.2019

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/05/rich-scandal-hit-and-populist-czech-leader-babis-to-meet-trump 

Rich, scandal-hit and anti-immigrant: Czech leader Babiš to meet Trump

   4.12.2019

https://www.euronews.com/2019/12/04/andrej-babis-czech-pm-fraud-investigation-to-continue-rules-state-attorney   

Andrej Babis: Czech PM fraud investigation to continue, rules State Attorney

Appendix in Czech

https://co-je-s-andrejem-babisem-mladsim.webnode.cz/podnet-vyboru-osn-pro-nasilna-zmizeni-ve-veci-andreje-babise-ml/ 

Appendix 3

April 10, 2015

Now the Czechs Have an Oligarch Problem, Too

June 5, 2015

Do FIFA Arrests Presage Further Investigations In Europe?

By GARY BERNTSEN. (He is a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) career officer who served in the Directorate of Operations between October 1982 and June 2005. During his time at the CIA, he served as a CIA Station Chief on three separate occasions and led several of CIA's most important counterterrorism deployments including the United States' response to the East Africa Embassy bombings and the 9/11 attacks.)

U.S. and Swiss white-collar crime investigators grabbed world headlines this week by announcing the indictments of FIFA officials on charges of bribery and money laundering. There may be far more important cases that merit U.S. law enforcement attention, however: allegations of public corruption, which, if true, could so undermine public confidence as to threaten democratic governance itself. In the Czech Republic, there may even be one with a sports connection.

A recent article in Foreign Policy magazine asked whether the Czech Republic has an oligarch problem, pointing out the enormous wealth and political control amassed by the Finance Minister (and Deputy Prime Minister), Andrej Babis. Since gaining power, Babis has been accused of using his government position to enrich his private interests. His party voted in May 2015 to maintain the generous subsidies for biofuels, the chief beneficiary of which is his 100 percent-owned company, Agrofert, provoking a no-confidence vote in the parliament.

Among other things, the article charged that Babis was affiliated with the KGB, and that his father was involved in black market arms sales, when he was a senior executive at Petrimex, a Czechoslovak state-owned chemical company. Among other projects during that time, Babis was responsible for a trade of arms for phosphates from Syria and African countries, according to Czech media. He later left Petrimex by taking control of a spinoff company, Agrofert, which now dominates the Czech agricultural and petrochemical industry (the Agrofert tennis club, chaired by Miroslav Cernosek, is a known gathering place for prominent Czechs).There was a report in November 2014 of an intercepted arms shipment to ISIS from the Czech Republic; to date there has been no reported investigation of the matter. Why has the Czech government shown no interest in following this case?

There is mystery surrounding the source of the financing for Babis' original takeover of Agrofert: we know only that it was owned by a Swiss company, OFI, that was headquartered in a small town known chiefly for another resident, Marc Rich. Whose money financed his original takeover of Agrofert, when he was just an executive with Petrimex? In 2001, OFI sold a 55 percent stake to Ameropa, another obscure Swiss company. Ameropa buys and sells chemicals in Russia, Eastern Europe and Latin America. Since Babis is the official in charge of the public treasury, and this company benefits from public subsidies, shouldn't there be full transparency in Agrofert's cash flows? Who were the original investors in those Swiss companies, and what is the return on their investments? Are billions of dollars are being moved from state coffers to private bank accounts in banking havens in Luxembourg and Switzerland? Where is all the money going that Czech consumers are paying to subsidize biofuels? Is there a money trail here that a prosecutor should follow?

Babis also has been accused of surrounding himself with police and prosecutors, and of using them to attack political and commercial enemies. Several political upheavals and policy battles in recent years have been punctuated by unusual police and prosecutorial activity. Are these tied to Babis in any way? For example, in June 2013, the Czech government was brought down in a strange maneuver by the organized crime unit of the police, headed by Robert Slachta, who staged a spectacular raid on the offices of the prime minister and people connected closely to him. As a result snap elections were held that brought Andrej Babis to power. On May 29th of this year, those charges were dismissed by the court as baseless.

Other government and commercial entities have received the attentions of Slachta and Bradacova, allegedly motivated by commercial and political interests. They have staged repeated raids on the office of the independent energy regulator, the ERU, who has stood up for transparency in energy pricing, and resisted market-altering subsidies. Most recently, Zeman's close ally Jan Mladek, the Minister of Trade and Industry, succeeded in ramming a poorly conceived amendment to the energy law through the parliament. The only real outcome of the amendment was to destroy the independence of the energy regulatory office, just months before a new tender for nuclear power plants is due from the Czech government: a tender in which RosAtom has a keen interest.

In 2014, Babis' Finance Ministry tried to nationalize Unipetrol's refinery, at a time when Babis' company had an outstanding lawsuit against the company for one billion U.S. dollars. Nationalizing a company - bringing it under the control of his finance ministry - with a billion-dollar liability from a lawsuit initiated by his company, Agrofert, would have had the appearance of a conflict of interest.

An ironclad rule of investment is that an investor expects a return. What did these opaque Swiss entities (OFI and Ameropa) expect for investing in Agrofert? Where is the money from the Czech treasury through Agrofert ultimately ending up? Since Ameropa is active in Russia, are there potential security risks to NATO interests? It is conceivable even that there are money flows ultimately tied to terrorist organizations, given the arms shipment to ISIS. This certainly merits investigation: the stakes are higher than corruption in a sports league.

https://www.icis.com/explore/resources/news/2001/11/05/150668/switzerland-s-ameropa-raises-stake-in-agrofert-to-55- 

Mark Andress, 11.5.2001

Switzerland's Ameropa raises stake in Agrofert to 55%

PRAGUE (CNI)--Swiss financial investment firm Ost Finanz und Investment (OFI) has sold its 50% stake in Czech agrochemicals group Agrofert to Swiss fertiliser and grain trader Ameropa, Agrofert's general director Andrej Babis told CNI on Monday.

As a result of the share transfer, Ameropa raised its holding in Agrofert from 5% to 55%.

Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.

"Ameropa is a chemical/agricultural/food holding with the same orientation as Agrofert," Babis said.

Based in Binningen, near Basel, Ameropa supplies potash to Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, West Africa and China from East German supplier Kalibergbau, and sells nitrogen products, including ammonia and urea, worldwide from Austria's Stickstoff Werke Linz. Ameropa's petrochemical business exports methanol from Russia and Romania and sells aromatics, solvents and plastics in central Europe.

Last month, Agrofert was shortlisted in the tender for Czech petrochemical and refinery group Unipetrol, stating that its chief interest lay in Chemopetrol. Babis said Ameropa supports the further expansion of Agrofert, particularly regarding the Unipetrol bid.

          THE RICHEST CZECH KEEPS A SECRET

https://www.respekt.cz/respekt-in-english/the-richest-czech-keeps-a-secret<br> 

Jaroslav Spurný, 13. 5. 2002 

The firm Agrofert has become the king of the Czech chemistry sector after the collapse of the Chemapol empire. In December 2001 Zeman's cabinet sold to Agrofert the state concern Unipetrol and although the transaction has not been paid up yet, the Agrofert representative Andrej Babiš allows the journalists to call him "the richest Czech".

The privatization of the chemistry sector is still a matter of great doubt. Babiš has already proved to be a skillful manager and his firms never go bankrupt. But Agrofert does not belong to him - fifty-five percent of the shares is in the possession of the mysterious firm Ameropa. Who is the owner of Ameropa? Nobody knows, even the ministers who entrusted the entire Czech chemical industry to it.

Baar

In the industrial zone in the district of the Swiss town Baar we may find the seat of the firm Ost Finanz und Investition (O.F.I.). The seat is an exaggeration, there is no office in the building, the owners are not working there and you may not meet even the company employees. Nevertheless this invisible company owned the majority interest in the Czech chemical empire Agrofert about which the Czech media state it belongs to Andrej Babiš.

To find out anything about the Czech expansion of the local enterprise in Baar is very difficult. O.F.I. shares its seat with twenty other firms in a small office of the Contrevi company. The building in the ugly Swiss backcountry has no parameters the laic would attribute to the company that owned the Czech firms with the annual turnover of almost one billion crowns for many years. The glass one floor house is situated next to the romming houses, a factory with a former silo where a low-class pub is situated.

"Yes, the firms resides here," said the secretary of the firm Contrevi, but refused to say more. Even the information when she saw anyone from O.F.I. for the last time. "It is a long time ago," said the man who was just entering the office, but his communication ended with saying this. The address in the Swiss directory includes the phone number in Geneva apart from the address in Baar. The alleged bosses in the unknown place in Geneva refused all the attempts to contact them. After a short ringing we heard a woman's voice. She did not introduce herself and when she heard the Czech journalists wanted to talk to her, she immediately put down the receiver. This was repeated approximately ten times in several days. There is no other contact to the enormously rich company. "O.F.I.? It is a long time ago, " said Andrej Babiš to the question what role the company played in his victorious march through the Czech chemistry sector. "It was the company of my Swiss schoolmates who wanted to earn some money, so I helped them," he added and ended the call.

Who is Andrej Babiš?

The only known representative of the Swiss shark who swallowed the Czech chemistry is still "the richest Czech" Andrej Babiš. O.F.I. has carried out all its Czech activities on his behalf. Babiš himself is a Slovak who came to Prague in 1994 as he says almost with no money. His business career is very similar to careers of other post November captains of the Czech industry, very close is to the broke chemistry magnate Václav Junek.

Babiš's father Štefan became a representative of Czechoslovakia in the business organization GATT in 1969 in the permanent mission of UN in Geneva. Andrej studied in Geneva at grammar school College Rousseau, than at the School of Economics in Bratislava. The archive documents prove that he was listed as the agent of the Secret Police with a cover name Bureš in 1982. In 1998 his file at the counter-intelligence group was closed and submitted to the espionage group. "Unfortunately we may not study the details as the files are archived in Slovakia," said the officer of the Czech Secret Service. The visit to Bratislava and meeting with the Slovak policemen did not bring any light on the Babiš's co-operation. "As regards violating laws, we have never been interested in Babiš, although we know that the Czech police are looking into some of his transactions. We have no access to the files anyway," they explained. "I have never co-operated with the secret police, on the contrary I was interrogated in the year 1982 due to my refusal to purchase the phosphates of low quality in Syria," Babiš comments today. He refuses to say any comment to the fact that he is in the evidence of the official file register of the secret police.

Since the beginning of the 80s Babiš was working in the joint stock company Petrimex (see the frame on the page 15), a monopolist importer of the oil and chemical products to Slovakia. He began as a managing clerk in the year 1985 and when he was 31, he was sent to Morocco. Since the beginning of the year 1990 he represented twelve Slovak firms in Rabat. "Morocco was one of the few Arabic countries where the Soviets had minimal influence. Of course they were trying to establish it. It is possible Babiš was listed to help them do it," said the former Slovak employee of the counter intelligence office. (Babiš himself did not answer the question about his work for the espionage group.) After his return home in the year 1990 Babiš became the deputy of the manager of Petrimex and three years later he became the member of the board of directors.

The Move to the Czech Republic

In 1994 a group of unknown people established the firm O.F.I. in Swiss Baar. At the approximately same time Babiš left Slovakia for the Czech Republic and established the company Agrofert being assigned by Petrimex.

Babiš says that he had to leave Slovakia, because he became unwanted for the people around Vladimír Mečiar. "Not nearly. In the summer 1995 he was still a member of the board of directors of Petrimex, a firm under the full control of Mečiar's people. They got angry with him when he took control of Agrofert, " said the policeman from the Bratislava unit investigating economic crimes. In the year 1995 the company O.F.I. entered the company Agrofert and increased the capital stock. Petrimex did not participate in this increasing and lost all the influence in the enterprise. Therefore Petrimex removed Babiš from his function of the vice-president and even instituted a suit against him because the he was not authorized to let the capital stock be increased - but the firm lost the court dispute. In the years 1995-2000 Agrofert privatized or bought tens of agriculture firms. Babiš says to the media that he purchased the firms for low prices using the credit of the foreign banks. Therefore he took control of the third of Czech agriculture production ranging from the basic industry to the deliveries to the retail network. He owns the network of the supplying and purchasing enterprises or for example the largest Czech fabricator of the turkey meat Adex. In the year 1999 he privatized Dezu Velké Meziříčí, the largest Czech producer of fertilizers and the Precheza company in Přerov.

Once Upon a Time Near Lovosice

Immediately after its establishment Agrofert entered the chemical sector. The privatization start was the company Lovochemie in Lovosice. The tender of the Klaus's cabinet in the year 1995 resulted in the ownership of 55 per cent interest by the firm Proferta that was co-owned by Babiš and the German enterprise BAGS. Proferta lent half a billion for this privatization from IPB - it used the services of the bank that under the pressure of Klaus's cabinet financed a lot of privatizations knowing the credits might not be actually paid up. During the three years Babiš played a trick for which he is being investigated by the police - using the state enterprise Unipetrol he got rid of his liability to the bank and the German partner. Agrofert and Unipetrol established joint venture Agrobohemia for this purpose and this firm by increasing of the capital stock by a quarter of billion gained the majority in Lovochemie. Proferta did not participate in spite of the pressure from the German co-owner BAGS and it was left with a minority interest. The coup strategy was controlled by Babiš, the chairman of the board of Lovochemie, Agrobohemia and Proferta. Right after this he initialized the liquidation of Proferta even with its half billion debt to IPB. It is still a mystery who provided Agrobohemia with the capital necessary for the controlling of the enterprise - the state Unipetrol, Babiš, or the firm O.F.I.? Unipetrol nor Babiš have never explained the reason of the incorporation and O.F.I. remains to be a dark conspirator.

The struggle for Lovochemie ended when the German firm BAGS brought a suit against Agrofert. "The police are investigating the entire transaction with regards to the fact that Mr. Babiš was in all the boards. We think it was misusing of the business information," said Lenka Bradáčová, the state prosecutor in Ústí. The police put the investigation aside, but the state prosecutor lodged a complaint and the case was returned to the investigators that are to close the case by the end of this summer. ČSOB, the new owner of the "lion's bank" IPB empire inherited the Proferta's debt. ČSOB took legal action against Proferta for deceit. Proferta guaranteed the loan by the privatized interest in Lovochemie and when it lost the influence in the enterprise, the value of the bank guarantee was lost as well. The public prosecutor Bradáčová is convinced that it was Babiš's intention.

Courtship to ČSSD

The "Lovosice" strategy - to prefer the state Unipetrol for the privatization to the credits of half-state IPB - was practiced by Babiš unceasingly. The very good relationships with Social Democratic politicians proved to be very useful. For example in the spring 1999 the then minister of finance Ivo Svoboda enforced the boss of Babiš's Lovochemie Pavel Švarc to the post of the general manager of Unipetrol. It was also three years ago when Andrej Babiš - according to the information of secret services - was pulling through in the Zeman's cabinet to join the state enterprise České produktovody (Čepro) to Unipetrol. Čepro is a key distributor of the fuels in the Czech Republic, it stores the obligatory material reserves and the enterprise tanks will be used also for the needs of NATO. The chemical resort king did not succeed then. The cabinet with a new minister of finance Pavel Mertlík decided that Čepro will be retained in the ownership of the state.

July 2000: Aliachem

In July 2000, a month after the IPB fall, the co-operation of the cabinet with Babiš brought the first great result. The above mentioned joint venture of Agrofert and Unipetrol - Agrobohemia -acquired as the result of the pressure of Zeman's cabinet the bankrupted holding Aiachem associating Spolana Neratovice, Fatra Napajedla and Synthesia Pardubice. Holding was indebted and was not able to pay up the credit of more than three billion crowns.

Miroslav Grégr, the minister of industry, decided about this cabinet's decision - in spite of the protests of his colleague Mertlík. "All my reports on the firm Agrofert are positive," said minister Miroslav Grégr to the journalists. "As far as I know it is profitable and pays taxes," he added.

The price for Aliachem was never published, but the unofficial information of the financial analysts says it might have been almost two billion crowns. "There is no guarantee that Agrobohemia will be able to finance the operation and restructuring of the firm. Moreover why did Unipetrol not buy Aliachem itself, but through Agrobohemia in which it does not have the majority interest and managers' control?" asked Mertlík then. Babiš and Agrochemie did succeed in Aliachem nevertheless. At least the accountant's reports prove this stating that the Aliachem raised up from the loss of many billion to the profit of thirty million in the last year. " I have always trusted Agrofert to manage this, " minister Grégr says today.

But it is not clear who paid for the purchase of Aliachem and the firm's restructuring. Babiš said that the purchase of his interest was not financed by the majority owner of Agrofert - O.F.I., but from the credit of the Citibank. It is not possible to verify the information, the banks do not publish the information on their debtors. We may not rule out the information from the cabinet's lobby that the entire purchase price was paid by the state Unipetrol.

Ameropa

Just one company was missing to create a chemical empire Agrofert - Unipetrol itself - the holding comprises mainly of the Chemopetrol in Litvínov, Kaučuk Kralupy, Paramo Pardubice, Czech refinery company and the network of the petrol stations Benzina. The Unipetrol privatization was decided by the cabinet in December 2002, two month before this date an important change happened in Switzerland. Ost Finanz und Investition sold its interest in Agrofert to the company Ameropa. Why did O.F.I. allow to lose such a advantageous business as the privatization of Unipetrol was? "It was not possible to sell such a strategically important enterprise to a firm that was under such conspiracy as O.F.I.," said the man from the Office of the Foreign Relationships and Information. "Especially in the time when the British firm Rotch Energy offered a price higher by three billion."

So the interest of O.F.I. was bought by the Basel firm Ameropa AG in October last year and today it owns fifty five per cent of Agrofert. Therefore it took the decisive control of the Czech oil industry, chemical industry and partly of agriculture sector. We may read on the website www.ameropa.ch that the firm was established in the year 1948, it is an important dealer with the fertilizers and it has been owned by the family Zivy. The boss of the company today is Andreas Zivy and the company employs approximately six hundred people in the tens of countries.

The seat of the firm is a neat detached house in the Basle neighborhood Binningen. Ameropa seat is announced by an unostentatious sign at the entrance to the villa. "No one is going to give any information on the firm with the exception of the manager," said the secretary and added that the firm does not employ any press spokesman. Andreas Zivy was busy. "Call in the morning," the secretary asked us to leave. The boss is busy in the next morning too. "Please call about three o'clock," proposes the voice on the telephone. At three we were told to call at five, at five on the next day, then on the next day.

Mr.Zivy did not react within ten dasy, so it was impossible to ask him where the firm would get the money for the Unipetrol purchase from, nor to verify the ownership structure. "We have examined the firm and we have found out that no one else than the people named on the official pages is behind it," the officer of the Czech espionage group said. The one people talk about is Marc David Rich, the oil businessman, who was sentenced in absence some years ago to nine years in prison in USA for illegal business with Iranian oil under the embargo in the 80s (last year he got an amnesty of Bill Clinton under scandalous circumstances). Rich has had his official seat in the Swiss town Baar (in a place where the O.F.I. company has its residence). Rich's connection to Ameropa is proved also by the fact that the Swiss firm and Rich own the firm Kolmar Petrochemicals - this is the information found by the Czech espionage group. "It is just a chance," said Andrej Babiš. Andreas Zivy has never commented this connection.

Ameropa is not a known firm in Basel, no significant news was published about it in the local press during the last year. Even the ministers who approved the privatization of the Czech oil industry to its hands. "I do not know it," said the minister of interior Stanislav Gross. "I do not know it," said the minister of transport Schling. The same answer we heard from the chairman of the ČSSD deputy committee Bohuslav Sobotka, the boss of the deputy club of the Union of Freedom Karel Kühnl or the economic expert of the People's party Miroslav Kalousek.

Unipetrol

When the cabinet promised to sell the entire Unipetrol to Agrofert, it carried out a very unconventional transaction. Agrofert offered the least money out of all the bidders. When the dealers found out that the public tender was won by Agrofert, the value of the share fell from fifty to thirty crowns.

"It is unbelievable," said the police expert on the investigation of economic crimes. "Unipetrol helped Agrofert with its finance to privatize all the significant enterprises that belong to the Babiš's empire now. And at the end the cabinet approved the privatization of Unipetrol to the ownership of Agrofert. It reminds me of a gigantic corruption," he added. The politicians do not seem to be excited. " I do not know a lot about it, it passed by me," said the deputy Sobotka, the bank expert of ČSSD. "I do not know a lot about it, " said Karel Kühnl for the Coalition.

Agrofert is to pay twelve billion and the general interest of the economic public was drawn to the question how it is going to do it. According to the information published so far the transaction will be carried out in two stages. During the first there should be the compensation of Agrofert to Unipetrol. Agrofert is according to the financial experts going to borrow twelve billion - from Unipetrol or from some of the banks and the price of Unipetrol will by paid from such credit.

Then it will sell a part of the Unipetrol enterprise, especially the company Benzina, which owns more than three hundred petrol stations - it is the largest network in the Czech Republic, modernized eight years ago with the costs amounting to 5 billion. The American firm Conoco has a right of refusal for Benzina sale, the announced price is three to five billion crowns. For the second - Unipetrol will get rid of the fifty-five per cent interest in the Czech refinery, one of the largest Czech oil fabricator for the price of more than eight billion crowns. The consortium IOC (Conoco, Agip, Shell) is interested in purchasing the interest in the Czech refinery company. All Babiš needs to privatize is the credit that will be soon paid up by the sale of the part of the firm. In any case he will have the overwhelming majority of the chemical factories in the country actually for free.

The Cabinet to the Enterprises, the Enterprises to the Cabinet

The new managers of Babiš type have acquired their influence in the economy during the rule of the social democrats. One of them is Jozef Čimbora, Babiš's long term colleague in Petrimex (he worked in the board since the year 1969 to the year 1993) who is managing the firm Falkon Capital now. Without any public tender Falkon acquired the right to enforce the Russian debt of one billion crowns for twenty billion crowns. The transaction arose unusual suspicion: Russia remunerated more than fifty billion - the thirty billion difference vanished on the way from Moscow to Prague. Falcon is similar to Agrofert not just by the close relationship to the cabinet - also it belongs to the company with the seat in the only office in the outskirt of the out-of-the-way Swiss town. Babiš and Čimbora are not doing their business together, they even deny their contacts from Petrimex. "I do not know Mr. Babiš, there is nothing to talk about," he said to the question whether they continued their mutual co-operation. Babiš has not commented his relationship to Čimbora and did not answer even the written questions.

Similar non-transparent firm is Housing and Consulting, which is registered in Israel and which got the public order for the construction of the highway in Ostrava also without any public tender. The wangled public tendering and hard governmental pressure accompany the effort to buy the gripen air-fighters (see the page 5). The fact that the cabinet's business activities seem to be connected with the same names all the time is proved by the fact that the purchase of the gripens from Britain for more than one hundred billion crowns should be accompanied by the British investments into the Czech firms - among the chosen ones there is Babiš's Deza and Aliachem with promised investments of twelve billion crowns.

Who owns Ameropa?

Babiš is different to other chemical magnates by the fact that according to the available information his enterprises are profitable. Babiš's firms are also profitable - with the exception of the Proferta case in the amount of half billion - they regularly pay installments of their credits which according to the available information amount to five billion. "The firms of Mr. Babiš pay up the credits in full compliance with the preset installment plan," said the officer of Živnostenská banka for example.

The secret services monitor Babiš in more critical way. Up to now his co-operation with the communist espionage group has not been explained (the documents were allegedly lost), the origin of his capital and the background of the O.F.I. firm that controlled the whole holding Agrofert for seven years is not clear either. Also Ameropa refuses to inform about its ownership structure.

The secret services warned Zeman's cabinet about the non-transparency of the Swiss firms in one of their reports last year. They stated that the Swiss may have been hiding the investments of a third person. The reports points out that the change to take control of the oil chemical industry and the chemical sector in the member state of NATO may draw interest of a lot of risky companies. It is not possible to rule out an owner behind whom Russian, Arabic or Chinese secret services may stand or the organized crime. The cabinet did not get excited and to the question "Who is the owner of Ameropa?" no minister knows the answer or wants to answer.

Babiš has to agree with creditors of Unipetrol, said Jiří Soustružník, the financial analyst of the company Patria Finance

Agrofert is buying Unipetrol for twelve billion. What will it actually acquire?

It is the dominant company in the chemical industry. The firm is significant even from the point of view of the entire Czech economy. the Czech refinery company had been the key stone of the Unipetrol, but the results in the last year and in the first quarter of this year report that the company loses its former position in the holding. The actual pillar is Chemopetrol today, where the investments are carried out to other capacities as the same is done also in Kaučuk Kralupy. These firm have a significant impact to the amount of the Czech export.

In what way are these firms essential for the Czech economy in your opinion?

They are key suppliers of the raw materials for the chemical industry.

Where will Agrofert get the money to pay up?People say that by the sale of the Unipetrol interest in the Czech refinery company and the network of petrol stations Benzina.

The time consequence will be probably such that Agrofert will have to borrow the money for the purchase of Unipetrol. Then Unipetrol will sell the Czech refinery company and Benzina. The public was informed that Unipetrol is to get eight and half billion crowns for the Czech refinery company.

If Agrofert counts with the money for the Czech refinery company, it will intend to get away from Unipetrol. There are three basic alternatives. The dividends, but it is not very probable. The second is the loan of this money to Agrofest, the third variant is the Unipetrol's acquisition of the assets in ownership of Agrofert. There is problem though. The creditors of Unipetrol (its debts amount to approximately twelve and half billion crowns) allegedly have according to the contract a right to require a immature repayment of the debt when Unipetrol is sold. The question is how the new owner will agree with them - may be it will be forced to use the money from the sale of Czech refinery company to repay the debts.

Who are the creditors of Unipetrol?

Unipetrol has issued the bonds and then there are the classical bank credits.

Unipetrol and Agrofert own the firm Agrochemie in the exact proportion half to half. Through this company they control Aliachem and Lovochemie. What were the advantages of such connection to the state Unipetrol?

I cannot see any positive economic advantage. But I evaluate is as a man who stands outside, it is possible that the management may see some advantages in it.

Is twelve billion for Unipetrol enough? Some firms offered more.

I would not like to evaluate this. The cabinet had a condition that Unipetrol would stay altogether after the privatization, the strategy of the firms doing their business in the Central Europe region, is also important. Other facts may play their role too. I do not know the privatization bids.

The private life of Andrej Babiš

Andrej Babiš lives in a luxurious villa in Bratislava. His address in Prague is in Roháč street in Žižkov. The Slovak magnate is married, has a 23-year old daughter and 18-year old son. The daughter is on a practice stay in an investment bank in New York, his son studies a grammar school in Prague. Babiš owns the Slovak firm Berg together with his brother Alexander. His brother entered the firm in the year 1998 with a deposit of twenty-two million crowns.

Babiš likes plying tennis. He regularly organizes the tournament of the Slovak top celebrities at the courts of his club Slávia Agrofert STU in Bratislava. The celebrities as the Slovak president Rudolf Schuster and the Prime Minister Dzurinda take part. Babiš likes to talk about the tennis match of his daughter against the prince Moulay Rachíd (the brother of the today's king) during their stay in Morocco. She beat the prince and won a dog with royal blood confirmed by a certificate.

Petrimex

The Bratislava firm Petrimex is Slovak equivalent of the Czech Chemapol. It was established in the year 1948 as an exclusive importer of the oil materials to Slovakia. Similar to its Czech equivalent in the year 1969 it became a state joint stock company in which tens of firms had their interests, the firms it provided the import of materials for. And Petrimex also went bankrupt in the year 1999 as the firm Chemapol.

Anton Rakický was the manager of Petrimex since the year 1990, after his removal in 1995 he disappeared hiding from the legal prosecution in the USA. It was him who named Babiš his deputy in the year 1990 and he said the same as Babiš - that Mečiar's cabinet wanted to destroy him.

The former Mečiar's minister of finance Sergej Kozlík authorized Petrimex enterprise to enforce 300 million of Slovak crowns owned to Slovakia by Egypt. Petrimex sold the account receivable for 150 million Slovak crowns to the firm Broadfield Finance registered on the Virgin Islands. The contract with the cabinet did not authorize Petrimex to sell the account receivable to anyone. Petrimex then went bankrupt and up to now it is not clear where the money from Broadfield Finance finished.

https://www.icis.com/explore/resources/news/2002/04/08/160683/degussa-sells-fertilizer-unit-to-ameropa-agrofert 

4.7.2002

Degussa sells Fertilizer Unit to Ameropa/Agrofert

Degussa plans to sell SKW Pie-steritz, its German-based fertilizer producer, to Ameropa of Switzerland and Agrofert of the Czech Republic, in which Ameropa has a majority shareholding.

Agrofert, a chemicals and food conglomerate, recently signed a contract to buy a 63 percent state-owned share in Unipetrol, the Czech Republic's main petrochemicals producer. Ameropa is a privately owned trader in petrochemicals and fertilizers.

Under the deal with Degussa, the two companies will initially buy a 51 percent holding in SKW Piesteritz, on a 50/50 basis, which will later be increased to 100 percent.

The sale of SKW Piesteritz, which had sales of á250 million ($220 million) last year, is part of Degussa's divestment program aimed at focusing the company entirely on specialty chemicals.

"The sale will position SKW Pie-steritz as a central element of a growing central European fertilizer corporation," says Utz-Hellmuth Felcht, De-gussa's chairman.

Meanwhile, the company is expanding its silanes capacity in Europe and the US despite the slowdown of a relatively fast growth rate.

The company has just opened an expansion for a grade of organosilanes for scratch-resistant coatings at Rheinfelden, Germany, where a new facility for silane esters went on stream last year.

A new chlorosilane plant is due to start production at Antwerp, Belgium, at the end of this year. An aminosilane facility is set to open at Theodore, Ala., in the second quarter of this year.

Degussa's aerosil and silanes business recorded a 5 percent drop in sales to á483 million ($425 million) last year, following poor market conditions in the second half.

"The overall growth rate for or-ganosilanes has been over 5 percent in the past," says a Degussa official. "It is expected that growth will return, but not to the extent we had previously."

The company expects its scratch-resistant organosilane to have considerable market potential, particularly in the automobile sector, where large quantities are already being used in top coats.

"The highest growth (for this product) is expected in the area of scratch resistant coatings," explains the official. "However, this growth is rather volatile because of probable changes in technology."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/neither-agents-of-influence-nor-useful-idiots/2015/10/16/73fdc478-7423-11e5-8248-98e0f5a2e830_story.html

October 16, 2015

Russia's new kind of friends

https://www.rapsinews.com/publications/20151103/274867755.html 

03/11/2015

Ameropa puts political pressure on Russia during Togliattiazot probe

CONTEXT

• Russian court seizes Togliattiazot shares from Ameropa Holding AG chairman

Andreas Zivy, the Swiss owner of Ameropa AG, declared his intention to litigate against the Russian government for alleged loss of Ameropa's investment in Togliattiazot. RAPSI publishes several opinions of Russian media on the subject.

Zivy made this statement at a briefing held in Zurich Airport on October 27. Zivy claims that the Russian authorities caused a 450 million dollar damage to Ameropa AG as an investor into TogliattiAzot.

Spokespeople for Ameropa stated that they are ready to hold consultations with the Russian authorities during the coming six months to settle the dispute amicably. Failing that, the dispute will be submitted to international arbitration.

RAPSI published several opinions of Russian media on the subject.

Nezavisimaya Gazeta, a Russian daily, reported that in December 2012, the Russian Investigative Committee opened a criminal investigation into large scale fraud at TogliattiAzot. According to the investigation, TogliattiAzot was selling its products at a significant undervalue to Nitrochem Distribution AG, a subsidiary trading firm of Ameropa AG. The trader in turn resold the products at market prices and selectively shared the proceeds with controlling shareholders of Togliattiazot.

In a separate investigation of 2013 the police revealed that valuable assets of Togliattiazot - the methanol production unit and plots of industrial land - were illegally withdrawn from the company, to benefit the same people.

Experts engaged by the investigation calculated the total damage that Togliattiazot suffered as a result of the criminal actions at $1.5 billion.

In December 2014 top managers of TogliattiAzot were arrested in absentia - chairman of the board of directors Sergei Makhlai, who, according to The Vek (16 October 2015), was stripped of his powers under the court decision, co-owner Vladimir Makhlai, Andreas Zivy and Nitrochem's CEO Beat Ruprecht. Some of the defendants were later put on the Interpol wanted list.

The Tribune wrote (27 October 2015) that the Chairman of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, Alexander Bastrykin, was personally supervising the case.

According to Nezavisimaya Gazeta, Zivy's statements look like an attempt to throw dust in the eyes of thepublic and put pressure on law enforcement agencies and courts.

Portraying the investigation as a political case rather than a purely criminal probe is a tactic to which the owners of TogliattiAzot resorted before. Rustam Kurmaev, lawyer at a litigation firm Goltsblat BLP, told Kommersant daily that the appeal to the government has no legal basis. In a nutshell, it can be perceived as a game for the public in the absence of real arguments.

Judging from the briefing, Zivy and his lawyers are trying to bring their claims under the Soviet-Swiss investment treaty of December 1, 1990, but its applicability to this situation is highly dubious.

It would be hard to say that Zivy's case in Russia was handled unfairly. His original pleadings and subsequent appeals were accepted and decided by the courts of Moscow, Samara and Nizhny Novgorod.

Interestingly, Zivy does not deny the fact that his company indeed engaged in the profit shifting trades which raised questions with the authorities. When asked whether his company bought products from TogliattiAzot at an undervalue to resell them at market prices, Zivy said that it was nothing but 'the law of the business' and no-one should get excited. Nezavisimaya Gazeta acidly remarks that besides the 'laws of the business' which Zivy follows there exist some laws of the Russian Federation which deny this practice as illegal.

https://www.ft.com/content/83908fd2-d4a5-11e5-829b-8564e7528e54 

Henry Foy, February 20, 2016

          Lunch with the FT: Andrej Babiš

The Czech Republic's billionaire politician on why it's wrong to compare him to Berlusconi and why he hates politics but won't quit 

Andrej Babiš is waiting with a pile of papers, a frown and a burning sense of injustice. The Czech Republic's finance minister and deputy prime minister is upset at many things, but primarily, he is angry at me. 

"I see that you are writing nonsense," he says, before I have adjusted my chair. "It is not true, what you have written here." He waves a wad of papers at me to make his point. 

We are in the posh restaurant of an even posher hotel, The Augustine, tucked between the cobbled streets that wind around the base of the Prague Castle, the president's official residence. Beyond the window, men stride by wearing dark trenchcoats while tourists with selfie sticks huddle in courtyards that date back to the ninth century. 

Babiš, wearing a navy suit with a thick pinstripe, and a thin light-blue tie, is sitting in his regular seat. The Augustine is a short stroll from the finance ministry, and Babiš eats here at least four times a week, according to the staff, sometimes for breakfast and lunch in one day. He even receives a special discount. 

The offending text he is pointing to is from an article I wrote, detailing the split between west and east Europe over the right approach to the influx of refugees and migrants into Europe. 

On one side, Germany and other western EU nations called for a quota system to distribute migrants among countries. On the other, eastern states with populist, conservative leaders such as Hungary's Viktor Orbán and Slovakia's Robert Fico refused, calling instead for border closures and using increasingly strong anti-immigrant rhetoric. 

"You have written that I demanded we shut the borders. This is not true. I only asked for the external [EU] border to be closed," he says, exasperated. "And you said here," he adds, peering over his thick-rimmed glasses, "that I said we should use the military to stop the migration. I didn't say that. I said we should use the military against the smugglers. It is a big difference." 

Babiš is mistaken; I had not written that he had called for these things. But my protests fall on deaf ears and I quickly realise I am being subjected to a prepared tirade. "Adding me into this article with Orbán and Fico," he goes on, "it is completely wrong." 

There are very few men in central Europe more powerful, or divisive, than Babiš. Born in 1954 in Bratislava in what is now Slovakia, he is that country's richest son, worth €2.4bn. Agrofert, his agriculture, food and chemicals group, is the Czech Republic's third-largest company by revenue. 

Five years ago, he spent about €4.5m to found a fledging social movement called Ano - which stands for "Action of Dissatisfied Citizens" and is also the Czech word for "yes" - that promised to end corruption and cosy relationships between business and politics. Ano emerged from the October 2013 election with 19 per cent of the vote and the second-largest bloc in parliament. It placed Babiš as kingmaker in the negotiations to form a new government and allowed him to become deputy prime minister and appoint a chunk of the cabinet as the junior partner in a coalition with the country's social democrats. 

Four months before the election, Agrofert purchased a media group that gave Babiš control of the Czech Republic's second-biggest newspaper, Mladá fronta Dnes; its broadsheet stablemate, Lidové noviny; the internet news portal iDNES.cz, with 4m monthly readers, and radio and television channels. 

Journalists began referring to him as "Babisconi", a reference to the scandal-tainted former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, who used his vast media empire to influence Italy's politics for close to two decades. Many in the Czech Republic think Babiš has built up a position of such strength that he is capable of a similar feat. 

"Look, I am an immigrant," he says, keen to continue the immigration theme. "And I lived five years in Morocco. I have lots of friends there. I have no problem with Muslims. But how many migrants will we take? We need to have a selection process outside of Europe. In Turkey. We need Ellis Island," he says. 

Over the past six months, this rhetoric has gone from fringe to mainstream in many EU capitals, as more and more western states break ranks and criticise the German-led plan of open borders in favour of tightening access to Europe. 

"Finally, everyone is doing what I said back in May," he says, with a sense of vindication. "I was right. It was clear that this quota is just another invitation to migrants, after Madame Merkel telling them to come." 

We have talked - or rather, he has talked and I have listened - for 30 minutes, during which time the waitress has made two attempts to take our order. 

Finally, Babiš is ready and, with only a cursory look at the menu, he chooses the cream of chestnut soup with oxtail to start, and, on his recommendation, I do the same. He follows with an orange, pumpkin and pomegranate salad, and I order trout with barley risotto. After slight persuasion, he joins me in a glass of white wine. A toast. An entente. 

Voters have taken to Babiš's abrasive style; he is consistently ranked as the country's most popular politician in national surveys. 

His reforms and crackdown on VAT avoiders have raised hundreds of millions of euros in previously unpaid tax. And, on his watch, the Czech debt has shrunk, and investors are paying the country for the privilege of holding its debt. He has kick-started long-stalled infrastructure projects such as the first motorway to Vienna, and is targeting a balanced budget by 2019, a not impossible dream. 

Yet ask any Czech politician and such achievements will almost never get mentioned. Despite an absence of evidence, many regard him as a crook, a swindler, a Russian sympathiser with a murky past who used public assets to gain wealth and then bought political power with the proceeds. 

My newspapers are completely independent. Of course, maybe - probably - there is some self-censorship, but that is not my fault 

His acquisition of Agrofert, once controlled by the state, in the late 1990s through a secretive takeover involving Swiss-registered holding companies with opaque funding, raised eyebrows and a lawsuit, which was thrown out. 

Political opponents have accused him of being an agent of the communist secret police, although a court ruled in 2014 that if he had been, he did not act knowingly. I spoke with Czech friends before the interview and the response was unanimous: "Babiš is bad news." 

"They are attacking me. In any way, from every corner," shrugs Babiš when I put these complaints to him. "I am the enemy number one of this system. I mean, come on. I am not Babisconi. I don't have any TV channels." 

This is untrue, I remind him. 

"OK, fine, I have a music channel," he concedes. "Look, I cannot use my newspapers. I am not crazy. I bought them for €90m and will not destroy my investment. My newspapers are completely independent. Of course, maybe - probably - there is some self-censorship, but that is not my fault." Both editors and some senior staff quit after the takeover. 

"I would be much more influential if I was not in politics," Babiš argues. "Then I could use my newspapers. Then I could be lobbying, influencing politicians. I see now how they do this." 

The former Czech president Václav Klaus enters the restaurant. The two men, who openly detest each other, smile warmly and exchange a few words. As Klaus walks off, Babiš's smile slides to a grimace and a withering look. 

"This is . . . the most negative person," he says. "Klaus, Kalousek. They all want to get rid of me," he explains, referring to Miroslav Kalousek, leader of the opposition, whom Klaus is meeting for lunch. 

Babiš entertains notions of conspiracies all around him, plots at every corner. Earlier, when I asked how he was, Babiš had replied that he was "still alive". "A lot of people want to kill me," he says, deadpan. However, not long after our lunch, the Czech authorities grant him his request for state police protection, citing threats to his life. 

Of his political opponents, he says: "They do not like me because I am out of their control, out of the system. I came and changed the system. It is now more difficult than before for them." 

Babiš controls 47 MPs in the 200-person chamber - his election performance was so unexpected that he only met some of his MPs for the first time at the opening of parliament. 

As our soups arrive with a flourish and a grind of the pepper mill, I ask if he accepts the argument that rich men should not be able to buy power in a democracy, and query whether billionaires make good finance ministers. 

"It is not a normal situation, I agree with you. But it is not my fault," he says. "Yes, I could take some marionette and manage from behind. But it is not fair. So I am in front, and everybody sees me, looks at me. I am now so transparent. Everyone is watching me so closely, from all corners. And I am not crazy to misuse my position." 

Babiš donates his ministerial salary to a foundation run by Agrofert that supports single-parent families, pays for his own car, and says he and his team fly on economy airlines. 

"I have a clean table. I don't do anything that is against the law, because everyone would use it. I have no interest. I am quite old. And at every stage in life you have a different motivation, and money is not really motivation for me now," he says. "I cannot even consume money. I am not fit for such a life of aircraft and yachts and new cars and parties. I am not living that style of life." 

Transparency does not change the fact that he owns one of the country's biggest companies. 

"Sure, there is a conflict of interest," he concedes. "But it is negative for me. I am now happy if my company does not win the contract with the state, for whatever. Because it is peanuts and there is no problem." 

Babiš is forthright, opinionated and often startlingly direct, with a streak of mild arrogance. He has earned the right, one may conclude, in the business world and at the ballot box. But he is also thoughtful, considered, charming, and often disarmingly self-deprecating. 

"Unbelievable!" is one of his favourite words. The EU's failure to tackle VAT fraud, his big bugbear, despite €170bn being lost each year, is "unbelievable". As is the failure of Frontex, the EU's border agency, to control migrant flows, and the terrorist cells operating in the suburbs of Paris and Brussels. 

He wants the UK to stay in Europe, but has lost patience with Greece. "Greece should never be in the eurozone and it would be better for them to have their local currency," he says. 

But he saves special disdain for his prime minister and coalition partner Bohuslav Sobotka, a quiet, reticent man whose lack of charisma contrasts sharply with Babiš. The two have never met privately, despite running the country together for more than two years, supporting each other through gritted teeth rather than risk the outcome of a post-collapse election.

"Sobotka is in a completely different world. He has a different role in the government. He is in a nice position, with no responsibility for laws. The ministers have to do the laws," says Babiš. 

As our main courses arrive, I ask about what lies in the future. Many think he might be the country's next prime minister. Others suspect he fancies a run for president. He is contemptuous of the suggestion. 

"I want peace and quiet but not in the Castle," he says, referring to the presidential office. "This is a representative function. I am a decision maker, I want to make decisions, to move, to build. 

Augustine Restaurant 

The Augustine Hotel, Letenská 12/33, Prague, Czech Republic 

Bottle of water CZK110 

Glass of pinot grigio x2 CZK480 

Cream of chestnut soup x2 CZK400 

Orange and pumpkin salad CZK220 

Trout with barley risotto CZK390 

Sencha tea CZK90 

Andrej Babiš discount CZK254 

Total (inc service) CZK1,600 (£46) 

"I have in my life achieved all I want. I do not need to convince myself if I am good or not. The motivation is different now," he says, almost melancholic. "Men always need what they do not have. So I have a big company, I am rich, I am successful in politics. So what I need now is more family life, more time for my children, and so on." 

Babiš lives with his partner of two decades and their two children, and also has two children with his former wife. 

"I did not want to go to politics. I am very unhappy in politics. It has destroyed my life," he says with a sigh, pushing the salad around with his fork. Such self-pity begs the question of why he ran in the first place, aside from his vague dreams of ending corruption, and "running the state like a business". 

"It is like twins. You have one part of your body that says yes, you are good, you did this for people. And the second says you are stupid, you have no time for your friends, your family, your business. You are quite old, you can die quickly," he says solemnly. He is 61. "I am already too old, this is difficult for me. It is quite emotional." 

Babiš had been in hospital the previous day with a problem in one of his eyes he says is stress-related. He says he is putting on weight. The lack of sleep shows in his face, which bears deep wrinkles. I suggest that if it is all so terrible, why not just pack it in and retire with his billions? 

"I could not resign. Are you crazy?" he says, life suddenly back in his eyes. "I would have to leave the country. It would be the biggest treason for everybody. I cannot do this. I have to finish it. A lot of people have a hope that I will change things. And I am changing things," he says. "The party is connected to my person. The party is me." 

This is the inherent contradiction of Babiš. The billionaire finance minister who suffers hatred, fatigue and ill-health from a job he never wanted, but cannot contemplate walking away from. He claims to be immune to power, yet is aghast at the thought of losing it. 

And what if he wins enough seats in the 2017 election to lead the country? 

"Next time?" he says, strangely subdued for a few seconds. "I do not know. Let's see. It depends on the result. I don't know how long I will live, and what should be the last period of my life. For me it would be better to be vice prime minister that manages all ministers. And the prime minister can be for foreign policy, and representation, and speeches," he says, chuckling. "That would be perfect." 

Time is ticking away on his luxury Bell & Ross watch. Babiš has cleared his salad rapidly, needing to make it to parliament for the afternoon session. 

"Don't write this stuff," he repeats with a smile as he shuffles his papers and gets up to leave, as if remembering the reason he wanted to meet in the first place. "I am not Orbán," he reminds me, folding his trench over his arm and moving towards the door. "It is not true." 

Henry Foy is the FT's central Europe correspondent 

https://www.transparency.org/news/pressrelease/transparency_international_czech_republic_complaint_concerning_andrej_babis

August 7, 2018

TRANSPARENCY INTERNATIONAL SENDS THE FIRST COMPLAINT CONCERNING ANDREJ BABIŠ'S CONFLICT OF INTEREST

https://www.radio.cz/en/section/news/andrej-babis-stands-behind-ally-viktor-orban-over-eu-sanctions

September 14, 2018

ANDREJ BABIŠ 'STANDS BEHIND' ALLY VIKTOR ORBAN OVER EU SANCTIONS

https://www.radio.cz/en/section/curraffrs/pm-andrej-babis-why-should-we-be-caring-for-syrian-orphans

September 17, 2018

PM ANDREJ BABIŠ: 'WHY SHOULD WE BE CARING FOR SYRIAN ORPHANS?'

https://www.euronews.com/2018/11/18/andrej-babis-eu-funds-scandal-czech-protesters-use-revolution-anniversary-to-call-for-pm-t

November 18, 2018

Andrej Babis EU funds scandal: Czech protesters use revolution anniversary to call for PM to quit 

https://amp.dw.com/en/how-oligarchs-captured-central-europes-media/a-46429120

November 23, 2018

How oligarchs captured Central Europe's media

https://www.dw.com/en/andrej-babis-the-anti-migrant-czech-premier-and-his-migrant-workers/a-47407402

February 7, 2019

Andrej Babis - The anti-migrant Czech premier and his migrant workers

https://www.economist.com/europe/2019/05/23/can-protesters-bring-down-the-czech-prime-minister

May 23, 2019

Can protesters bring down the Czech prime minister?

https://www.transparency.org/news/pressrelease/european_commission_confirms_czech_prime_minister_andrej_babish_has_conflic 

June 5, 2019 

CZECH PRIME MINISTER ANDREJ BABIŠ HAS CONFLICT OF INTEREST

https://www.transparency.org/news/pressrelease/president_of_the_european_commission_urged_not_meet_behind_closed_doors_wit 

June 19, 2019

PRESIDENT OF THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION URGED NOT MEET 'BEHIND CLOSED DOORS' WITH PRIME MINISTER OF CZECH REPUBLIC

https://www.dw.com/en/prague-crowds-demand-pm-andrej-babis-step-down/a-49319130 

June 23, 2019

Prague crowds demand PM Andrej Babis step down

Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis is fending off corruption charges, trouble in parliament, and a countrywide protest movement against his government. Hundreds of thousands have rallied against him in Prague.

https://www.dw.com/en/my-europe-blame-eastern-europes-oligarchs-on-eu-cash/a-49403372

June 30, 2019

My Europe: Blame eastern Europe's oligarchs on EU cash

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-czech-babis-idUSKCN1VN0DM

September 2, 2019

Czech attorney drops fraud case against PM Babis: newspaper

https://praguebusinessjournal.com/agrofert-andrej-babis-farming-land-after-owners-died/

October 31, 2019

Agrofert Illegally Farming Land After Owners Died

https://www.news4jax.com/news/world/2019/11/16/czechs-use-anniversary-of-velvet-revolution-to-pressure-pm/

November 16, 2019

Czechs use anniversary of Velvet Revolution to pressure PM

https://www.malaymail.com/news/world/2019/11/17/czech-pm-regrets-communist-past-on-velvet-revolution-anniversary/1810747

November 17, 2019

Czech PM regrets communist past on Velvet Revolution anniversary

https://www.theepochtimes.com/czechs-rally-against-pm-andrej-babis-on-eve-of-30th-velvet-revolution-anniversary_3149576.html

November 18, 2019

Czechs Rally Against PM Andrej Babis on Eve of 30th Velvet Revolution Anniversary

https://www.france24.com/en/20191203-leaked-eu-audit-shows-czech-pm-in-conflict-of-interest-report

December 3, 2019

Leaked EU audit shows Czech PM in conflict of interest: report

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/12/corruption-cases-pile-pressure-czech-prime-minister-191206160318659.html 

December 7, 2019

Corruption cases pile pressure on Czech prime minister

https://european-pirateparty.eu/mep-gregorova-eu-must-impose-economic-sanctions-hundreds-of-thousands-of-people-disappear-in-chinese-concentration-camps/

DECEMBER 28, 2019 

MEP GREGOROVÁ: EU MUST IMPOSE ECONOMIC SANCTIONS, HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE DISAPPEAR IN CHINESE CONCENTRATION CAMPS

In the Czech Republic, a scandal over practices of the richest man in the country, Petr Kellner, who hired a PR agency to improve China's reputation in the Czech media, erupted this week. "It is important to realise that downplaying violations of international conventions and fundamental human rights is part of Chinese propaganda. Certainly, entities such as, Kellner's PPF doing business in China, or Agrofert  (note: Andrej Babis is the only recipient of the holding Agrofert benefits), which has borrowed a billion Czech crowns (EUR 40 million) from the Bank of China, will always be defendants of a 'balanced' coverage of China. 'Balanced' coverage of concentration camps is indefensible" Gregorová comments. 

 https://balkaninsight.com/2020/01/15/czechia-2020-scandals-slumps-and-spies-in-paradise/

January 15, 2020

CZECHIA 2020: SCANDALS, SLUMPS AND SPIES IN 'PARADISE' 

https://balkaninsight.com/2020/02/04/uncivil-society-czech-ngos-stand-up-to-populists/

February 4, 2020

UNCIVIL SOCIETY: CZECH NGOS STAND UP TO POPULISTS

https://praguebusinessjournal.com/government-suing-ec-over-babis-conflict-of-interest/ 

February 5, 2020

Government Suing EC Over Babis' Conflict Of Interest

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlqCBfB-Vto

February 29, 2020

Czech Prime Minister Babis threatens political opponents and calls them TRAITORS

https://www.praguemorning.cz/european-parliament-leaders-slam-unacceptable-babis-comments/

March 6, 2020

European Parliament Leaders Slam 'Unacceptable' Babiš Comments

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/29/czech-pm-andrej-babis-must-resign-if-conflict-of-interest-say-meps

29 April 2020

Czech PM must resign if conflict of interest is confirmed, say MEPs

Leaked report from stormy visit to Prague tells Andrej Babiš to stamp out 'oligarchies'

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52455223 

29 April 2020

Police protecting Prague mayor after 'Russian murder plot'

https://www.transparency.org/en/press/following-european-parliament-resolution-czech-government-must-finally-act-on-pms-conflict-of-interest-1 

19 June 2020

Following European Parliament resolution, Czech Government must finally act on PM's conflict of interest

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/eu-lawmakers-voting-on-probe-of-fund-misuse-as-leaders-meet/2020/06/19/6ffeac8a-b225-11ea-98b5-279a6479a1e4_story.html 

20 June 2020

EU lawmakers seek probe of fund misuse on summit day

https://www.intellinews.com/from-russia-to-ireland-uralchem-s-long-fight-for-its-investments-171454/ 

November 14, 2019, By bne IntelliNews

From Russia to Ireland: Uralchem's long fight for its investments

Russian chemical companies Uralchem and Togliattiazot ammonia plant have been embroiled in a corporate dispute that has been running for more than a decade

Leading Russian fertiliser producer Uralchem got itself into a nasty corporate conflict involving one of Russia's largest chemical plants. The dispute between the company and the former management of Togliattiazot ammonia plant has ended in an acrimonious legal battle as minority investors scramble to recover billions of rubles they claim has been stolen.

The saga has been running for over a decade. Most recently, three beneficial owners and former CEO of Togliattiazot (TOAZ), the largest ammonia producer in Russia, as well as CEO of TOAZ's exclusive trader, Nitrochem Distribution AG (Nitrochem), have launched appeals against a conviction for fraud passed down in July 2019.

In the appeal, the Samara regional court is considering the conviction of the father and son team Vladimir and Sergey Makhlai who own TOAZ, its former director general Evgeny Korolev, the co-owner of TOAZ and owner of the Swiss company Ameropa AG, Andreas Zivy, as well as the director of Nitrochem (Ameropa's subsidiary), Beat Ruprecht.

All of the defendants have long since fled Russia. Most of them now live in self-imposed exile, while they continue to battle their conviction in international courts in Ireland and Cyprus.

It's a familiar story to Russia-watchers with its roots in the classic cash between trying to build a business and stripping a company of its bankable assets. The conflict dates back to 2008 when Uralchem, one of Russia's largest chemical producers and which was then planning an IPO, acquired a 7.5% stake in TOAZ from Viktor Vekselberg's Renova group. Later that year Uralchem increased its stake by another 2.47%. The company closed the deal, paying at the full valuation rate of the shares at that time, according to Uralchem, and other major Russian companies were competing to acquire the TOAZ stake. This was years before Vekselberg appeared on the US sanctions list and he was still a respectable businessmen.

At the time of the deal TOAZ was profitable and paying handsome dividends. With the deal, Uralchem hoped to boost its valuation ahead of its own IPO. And it looked like a good investment; in 2006, TOAZ was paying dividend of RUB25 per share, rising to RUB30 per share in 2007.

Yet things changed dramatically after Uralchem bought into the company in 2008. Despite no obvious change in market conditions, dividend payments plunged to only RUB5 per share, falling to nothing at all in 2008, according to Uralchem.

Put out by this change in fortune, Uralchem requested to review the company's financial and corporate documents, to explain the drying up of dividend payments and better appraise the health of TOAZ.

Yet despite these repeated requests, the TOAZ management refused to hand over the information over following years. As a result, the Federal Financial Markets Service prosecuted TOAZ more than twenty times for non-submission of documents, resulting in fines totalling RUB11.5mn, according to Uralchem.

Fed up with the lack of return, Uralchem attempted to unload the stock in 2011 and Uralchem offered its stake to Belport Investments Limited. But yet again the TOAZ management's failure to provide information on the majority shareholders resulted in the collapse of the deal, and cost Uralchem $1mn in penalties, according to the company.

Next, Uralchem complained to the Russian financial markets regulator (FSFR). The regulator found TOAZ in violation of its obligations to provide shareholders with information. The court upheld the decision, despite TOAZ's later challenge in the Commercial Court, but TOAZ continued to ignore the ruling.

In 2011, having failed to find an administrative and regulatory way to access documents and information, Uralchem filed a criminal complaint against the TOAZ leadership on the infringement of its shareholder rights.

It was the during the investigation into these allegations that more details on the opaque nature of the Makhlais' business structures came to light that explained the sharp drop in dividend and refusal to abide by the law.

A network of companies, including Swiss trader Nitrochem Distribution AG, had long been involved in the syphoning of resources from TOAZ, which the prosecuting team alleged was as part of a large-scale fraud.

An intensive seven-year investigation ensued. And in July 2019 the Komsomolsky District Court of Togliatti, found the Makhlais and three others guilty of fraud through deceiving shareholders, concealing company information, and bypassing corporate procedure to sell products at a reduced price to its affiliate Nitrochem Distribution AG. The court appointed experts estimated a total of the RUB84bn ($1.4bn) had been siphoned out of TOAZ.

The scale of the alleged fraud caught the eye of tax authorities. Alongside the criminal proceedings, they opened a tax audit of TOAZ, concluding that the company had understated its tax liabilities by total of RUB3.5bn ($54.6m). As the most significant minority shareholder, Uralchem filed a civil lawsuit. A court order was issued, demanding that the Makhlais and their associates return RUB77.3bn to TOAZ and RUB10bn to Uralchem ($1.2bn and $160m respectively at today's exchange rate).

As the investigations proceeded more and more details came out. Starting in 2005, TOAZ had begun selling assets at prices significantly below market level. An ammonia production unit worth RUB2.4bn ($38m) was sold for just RUB100mn ($1.5m). TOAZ also sold a methanol production facility valued at RUB13.5bn for a paltry RUB132.5mn ($2.1m). Both facilities were sold to Tomet LLC, a firm that that the court confirmed had affiliation with the Makhlais.

On top of this, TOAZ, Nitrochem Distribution AG and group of offshore entities involved into the scheme had settlement accounts in foreign currency with Tolyattihimbank. Sergei Makhlai himself owns 100% of the bank.

Fight goes international

With a string of decisions from Russian courts and regulators stacking up against them, Sergey Makhlai and his associates have taken the fight overseas.

In 2016, four offshore companies filed a lawsuit against Uralchem's Chairman Dmitry Mazepin, alongside several other individuals and companies. The plaintiffs accuse Uralchem and the individuals of conspiring to inflict "catastrophic losses" on the plaintiffs, steal their shares and seize TOAZ for themselves.

This lawsuit was predated by a 2010 Irish lawsuit and another filed in Cyprus. Delays and a failure to produce evidence on the part of the former TOAZ management saw both these cases abandoned. The most recent Irish case is currently awaiting a judgement on whether the Irish Courts have jurisdiction.

"Pay-for-play" attacks, notoriously common in the Russian press, have been exploited against Uralchem in the conflict. "Pop-up" think tanks no-one has heard of have produced research damning the company's financial standing. "In those publications disseminated in some Russian and foreign language media, Uralchem is falsely accused of tax evasion, obtaining loans from state banks to siphon funds abroad, and illegal appropriation of mineral resources", according to Uralchem's official statement. Attacks have been levelled at not just the company and the individuals, but the various investigative and judicial authorities involved.

Fleeing Russia in 2005 from other ongoing TOAZ related criminal investigations, TOAZ Chairman Vladimir Makhlai remains abroad to avoid fraud charges related to the dispute. He has also been charged with unrelated tax evasion charges.

The convictions passed down by the Russian courts have so far failed to touch him. Like so many powerful Russian businessmen before him, Makhlai has escaped appearing in Russian court by fleeing to London, where he enjoys a comfortable life in "Londongrad", safely embedded in the Russian émigré community, according to reports.

Vladimir's son, Sergei, formally took over running the company after his father jumped ship. Yet he also fled Russia in 2014 in the face of looming criminal charges. According to reports he now lives in the US but has kept a much lower profile than his gregarious father.

Despite their absence from the country, the Russian legal system has continued to grind on in their respective cases. July this year saw both Makhlais, and three close associates, handed prison sentences of between eight and a half and nine years in absentia. They were also fined around $1.85bn in damages. As an interim measure, TOAZ's assets have been frozen by the Russian courts.

The illegal withdrawal of working capital from TOAZ continues to have severe impacts on the company. The main production facility, while operational, is starved of investment, creating a growing economic and environmental risk to the region.

Minority shareholders appear confident that, if the stolen funds can be recovered, TOAZ can be restored to good working order and a sound financial footing. But the delays in the process and the damage done by the company's former leadership may take years to rectify.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/swiss-grain-merchant-ameropa-picks-152018394.html 

November 19, 2019

Swiss grain merchant Ameropa picks Bunge executive as next CEO

PARIS, Nov 18 (Reuters) - Swiss grain merchant Ameropa said on Monday it has appointed William Dujardin, a longstanding manager at Bunge, as its next chief executive.

Dujardin will take up the post on Jan. 8, Ameropa said in a statement.

He will succeed Andreas Zivy, the group's chairman who took on the CEO role earlier this year when Jan Kadanik left the firm.

Dujardin, a 45-year-old French national, has spent the past 14 years at U.S-based Bunge, one of the world's largest agribusiness groups. He was most recently vice president, north and central Europe.

Zivy, a member of the family that founded Ameropa, will remain board chairman.

Ameropa is a major supplier in international grain markets, sourcing much of its product from Europe and Black Sea countries. It also produces and distributes fertilisers. 

(Reporting by Gus Trompiz; Editing by Susan Fenton)

https://www.ppftelecom.eu/files/pr-20200702-cetin-group.pdf 

2.7.2020

PPF Telecom Group today announces the completion of the separation of retail and infrastructure at three of its Telenor branded mobile operators in Bulgaria, Hungary, and Serbia, and subsequent establishment of CETIN Group. Newly founded CETIN Bulgaria, CETIN Hungary, and CETIN Serbia, together with CETIN in the Czech Republic will become the telecommunication infrastructure backbone of PPF Telecom Group...

Jan Kadaník has been newly appointed Chairman of the CETIN Group B.V. Board of Directors and will focus on the overall strategy of the CETIN Group. Mr. Juraj Šedivý shall be responsible, in his position of the Board Member and CEO, for the management and operations of the CETIN Group. *** About Jan Kadaník Jan Kadaník has broad international experience with finance, M&A and strategy. He spent the last 12 years in Basel, Switzerland, working for the Agri conglomerate Ameropa initially as chief finance officer and subsequently as chief executive officer for the last five years. Prior to that, Mr. Kadaník held a strategy and finance role at Agrofert, a major Czech industrial conglomerate, for seven years. Mr. Kadaník holds a master's degree in international trade and international finance from the Prague School of Economics and has completed various professional courses during his career, most recently a senior executive programme at IMD Lausanne.

https://www.rapsinews.com/judicial_news/20191203/305144024.html 

03/12/2019

Samara Regional Court confirms conviction of former Togliattiazot executives

CONTEXT

• Former Togliattiazot executives sentenced to prison in absentia
• Togliattiazot Case: Lawyers against Law
• Moscow court extends detention of Togliattikhimbank head for three months

MOSCOW, December 3 (RAPSI) - The Samara Regional Court has upheld the conviction of Togliattiazot co-owners Vladimir and Sergey Makhlai, former plant general director Yevgeny Korolev, as well as their Swiss partners Andreas Zivy and Beat Ruprecht.

The defense of the convicts appealed to the regional court against the decision of Togliatti's Komsomolsky District Court dated July 5.

The district court found them guilty of fraud committed by an organized group on an especially large scale (Article 159.4 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). The court sentenced Vladimir Makhlai, his son and Sergey and Andreas Zivy to 9 years in a penal colony each; Korolev and Ruprecht received 8.5 years in a penal colony each and a fine.

Since all the defendants remain abroad, the judgement was issued in absentia.

The court also granted civil claims brought by Uralchem, a minority shareholder of TOAZ recognized as one of the victims in the case, against a group of 20 individuals and legal entities for more than 10 billion rubles ($156 million at the current exchange rate) as compensation for damage to Uralchem as a shareholder of the plant and 77 billion rubles as compensation for damage to TOAZ itself.

Uralchem Legal Director Dmitry Tatyanin finds the appeal ruling of the Samara Regional Court to be lawful, reasonable and fair. "We hope that the compensation of multi-billion-dollar damage will most favorably affect the future activities of Togliattiazot and that the court decision will stop funds embezzlement from the plant and the illegally withdrawn assets will be returned to the enterprise."

The most urgent task facing the enterprise is the implementation of measures aimed at ensuring industrial safety of production. Depreciated fixed assets and plant infrastructure require substantial investment. According to media reports, a recently completed industrial safety audit of the plant revealed many gross violations that pose a real threat to human life and health. It is to solve the problem that an urgent allocation of financial resources is required.

The next task should be the implementation of a comprehensive and consistent program of production modernization and development. Significant financial resources are needed for the reconstruction and upgrade of almost all urea and ammonia units, repair of the gas distribution system, the completion of the third urea unit, and the development of logistics facilities.

A minority shareholder of Togliattiazot, Uralchem is also interested in these investments in the enterprise. They may result in an increase in production and sales, and, therefore, an improvement of financial indicators, Tatyanin noted.

The investigation established that in 2007 the president of Togliattiazot Corporation Vladimir Makhlai together with his son Sergey, who was then vice president of the company, created an organized criminal group to systematically steal the company's products (ammonia and urea) using their official positions. For this purpose, Togliattiazot opened domestic and foreign currency accounts in Togliattikhimbank 100% owned by Sergey Makhlai, which received proceeds from the sale of products to the Swiss offshore company Nitrochem Distribution AG chaired by Beat Ruprecht and owned by Andreas Zivy's Ameropa AG. Part of the profit remained at the defendants' disposal and never returned to TOAZ. Moreover, in order not to pay taxes, the price of products was significantly underestimated. Thus, Vladimir and Sergey Makhlais, Zivy, and Ruprecht stole about 85 billion rubles belonging to TOAZ and its shareholders. During the trial, the facts of affiliation between TOAZ, Nitrochem Distribution AG and Ameropa AG were fully proven.

Holding executive positions at the enterprise, the former general director of TOAZ Yevgeny Korolev facilitated preparation and execution of financial reports with knowingly false information, as well as the drafting and execution on behalf of TOAZ of contracts for the products supply and additional agreements thereto with prices for products below the market level. For this, he received part of the illegally obtained proceeds of the criminal group.

The trial had been lasting for 18 months. The case file contains more than 500 volumes. The media have repeatedly reported that the defense attempted to overextend the trial under various pretexts. In particular, lawyers would not show up for hearings claiming to be ill or busy with other trials, often the witnesses they had summoned would fail to appear in court.

The full text of the judgment is available for download and can be reviewed via this link.

https://vekdaily.com/how-money-is-withdrawn-from-togliattiazot 

Sergey Tarasov, 19.5.2020

How Money is Withdrawn from Togliattiazot

Making products that are always in demand all over the world - ammonia and urea, Togliattiazot is one of the largest enterprises in the Samara region. The situation in which the plant found itself looks even more puzzling - its name is more and more often mentioned either in connection with criminal chronicle or with emergency incidents.

Part 1. Charter: where hundreds of millions of US dollars float away

The enterprise that used to be one of the most advanced companies of the domestic chemical industry does not have enough money not only to maintain the equipment in an operable and safe condition, but even to buy raw materials. Why? We will try to answer this question with a series of journalistic investigations about how, where and through which channels funds from Togliattiazot are transferred to offshores. Today we publish the first part of it, in which we will tell how at least USD 60 million a year is withdrawn from Togliattiazot through contracts for the charter and operation of ships.

Former Togliattiazot "red director" Vladimir Makhlai managed to privatize a huge plant under a procedure designed for small firms in the early 90's. Since then, the main objective for Makhlai, and then his sons and partners, was to bring Togliattiazot profit offshore, since Makhlai did not want to share it with other shareholders, considering the plant its family estate. Twenty years ago, together with his Swiss partners, he developed a transfer pricing scheme according to which the plant's products were sold at a very low price to the Swiss offshore company Nitrochem Distribution AG owned by Makhlai's Swiss friends, who later re-sold them in the global market at a fair price. The accomplices shared the unaccounted profit among themselves; they never returned it to the plant and never paid taxes thereon. Thus, in 2008-2011 alone, 77 billion rubles were stolen from the plant. However, in 2012, the Investigative Committee opened a criminal case on fraud against participants in the criminal scheme. In 2019, it ended with conviction in absentia for them.

After the start of the criminal investigation, and especially when the sentence was pronounced, it became much more difficult to withdraw money in the usual way, but the Makhlais did not intend to give up and stop the theft. They created many alternative channels, through which the plant's money continues flowing out to offshores bypassing Togliattiazot, its workers, and the Russian treasury.

One of these channels was ship chartering and commercial exploitation services. Until December 1, 2016, Togliattiazot did not have any expenses associated with the operation of ships. The company was only required to deliver ammonia to the port of Odessa, i.e., through the Tolyatti - Odessa ammonia pipeline. All issues of ships chartering, freight logistics, loading and unloading, pilotage services, laying routes, ship downtime, cargo insurance were the responsibility of the aforementioned Nitrochem Distribution AG, a member of Ameropa AG holding owned by a Swiss citizen Andreas Zivy.

During the implementation of the so-called "transformation program", the then Deputy General Director of Togliattiazot Dmitry Mezheedov (later he would become the General Director) decided to develop a block for reforming commercial activities with the help of a well-known consulting company Ernst & Young. For this purpose, in 2014, I.V. Grishin was transferred from Ernst & Young to the position of Deputy General Director for Commercial Issues at Togliattiazot Corporation; Nikolay Mosaltsev and Maxim Obukhov joined him. Sofia Dyukova, who was well acquainted with Sergey Makhlai, was invited from one of the Togliatti enterprises and participated several times in negotiations with him and the Nitrochem management - Andreas Zivy and Beat Ruprecht, as well as Ameropa AG CFO Michael Spiritus, son of the CIA officer Alan Spiritus.

This team, together with Ernst & Young employees, Norton Rose law firm, and Michael Spiritus, developed a draft contract for the provision of management services for the commercial operation of ships, which was personally approved by Sergey Makhlai. As a result, on December 1, 2016, the contract was concluded. The then general director Vyacheslav Suslov signed it for Togliattiazot.

Under the contract, all rights to provide charter services were transferred to Prime Gas Management Inc., a company registered in the Marshall Islands with a branch in Athens. Under this contract, Prime Gas received the exclusive right to perform charter transportation - peculiarly - without any tenders. The party under the contract was proposed by Sergey Makhlai, all agreements were carried out by I.V. Grishin, and the choice of a counterparty was legalized by Dmitry Mezheedov as a controller.

Prime Gas Management Inc. Manager was to perform all operations (selection of a fuel supplier, fuel quality requirements, price per ton, provision ports, etc.). This company was also to calculate all costs of the vessels operation (information on voyages, on calls to ports and channels, inspection costs in the portal and terminals, maintenance and repairs), insurance services for ships and cargoes, judicial procedures, etc.

Togliattiazot used to transfer to the Manager's account USD 400,000 for each vessel as the working capital to ensure its operation, i.e., according to the terms of the contract, for five vessels the starting advance amount amounted to at least USD 2 million.

Based on the estimates, the requirements for working capital were reviewed monthly and quarterly. That is, the amount of the starting working capital of USD 2 million was not fixed, but in fact it increased monthly.

The indicated amount was not really a compensation for the subsequent financial costs of the Vessel Commercial Operations Manager but represented an ordinary entry fee in order to ensure the minimum balance of working capital in separate accounts for each vessel for Prime Gas.

The size of working capital was periodically adjusted at the request of Prime Gas but Togliattiazot did not have the right to refuse to provide consent to increase working capital. Togliattiazot would receive the reports only 45 days after the end of the quarter. Additionally, the Manager would receive at least USD 15,000 per month in the form of a separate remuneration. In addition, the Manager would receive compensation for salaries, insurance premiums and clerical expenses.

The contract was made for five years and was governed by English law. To service the contract, Togliattiazot provided the details of the Volga Branch of Promsvyazbank in Nizhny Novgorod.

Under an additional agreement No. 1 dated December 30, 2018 between Togliattiazot and Prime Gas, the company was also required to pay an additional forecasted advance of USD 250,000 for each vessel. That is, for five vessels, this amounted to USD 1.25 million.

Under an additional agreement to the time charter with the company and Northwind Transenergy AS (Norway), Togliattiazot as a charterer paid a monthly charter fee of USD 797,900 for the first period (from February 2, 2017 to January 31, 2018), i.e., for the first year the cost of charter was 9,574,800 per vessel. Accordingly, for five vessels, the annual amount was USD 47,874,000.

Starting February 1, 2018, Togliattiazot, as a charterer, was paying the monthly charter fee of no less than USD 909,000, i.e. 10,908,000 per ship per year and USD 54,540,000 for five ships. In addition, Togliattiazot agreed with subsequent adjustment of the cost of freight without any questions.

After the dismissal of I.V. Grishin, the contract was supervised by Togliattiazot Deputy General Director for Finance N.V. Neplyuev.

Currently, the contract is supervised by the Director General Dmitry Mezheedov together with his deputy V.S. Pustynnikov. Since 2018, its fulfillment has been directly controlled by an employee of Togliattiazot Corporation Artem Kuzin, who used to work as a logistician in Turkey.

According to estimates of G.E. Sudnikova, the former commercial director of Togliattiazot, the costs of the enterprise to pay charter fees increased tenfold due to the lack of information on the ships movement monitoring. Previously, buyers of Togliattiazot Nitrochem products paid only for a specific voyage, that is, the delivery of a certain amount of ammonia. However, from December 1, 2016 (the date of the contract), Togliattiazot undertook to pay for all costs of the vessels maintenance, regardless of the period of operation, regardless of the amount of load, time of operation, rotation and composition of crews. In other words, Togliattiazot pays 100% of the costs of foreign enterprises maintaining, even without access to reports on their activities. Togliattiazot can control neither the loading, nor the operation, no anything else.

In the new markets of the Mediterranean and the Black Seas (Turkey, Tunisia, Morocco, Bulgaria, Egypt) large ships are not allowed to enter the ports. Togliattiazot sends at least 20 thousand tons of ammonia to ports, whereas a port can only accept 5 or 10 thousand tons. Thus, the ship is only partially unloaded, which is not logistically efficient. At the same time, Togliattiazot incurs all expenses for the additional delivery of these batches of 5-10 thousand tons. When NitroChem was engaged in chartering, it never delivered batches of less than 20 or 40 thousand tons of ammonia.

Togliattiazot also has to pay regularly all invoices issued by Prime Gas Management Inc. and Northwind Transenergy AS. The plant has no real control over the utilization of funds or their volumes. Only the Director General Mezheedov manages all related issues. He makes sole decisions on payments. No other department of the plant - neither the economic security service, nor the export department, nor the price analysis department - have the right to monitor the execution of charter contracts.

Former commercial director of Togliattiazot G.E. Sudnikova, who previously contacted Nitrochem and Ameropa, believes that there was no reason for the plant to change the conditions for pricing, tariffs, and terms. I.V. Grishin provided no justification for this. He simply removed the employees of the export department who were in charge of Nitrochem contracts fulfillment from work.

As a result, Togliattiazot does not have information about the ships operation during the calendar month, voyages, or ports of call. Perhaps the ships are used to transport goods of some other companies. Information about operations of Prime Gas Management Inc. and Northwind Transenergy AS of Norway is confidential and not subject to audit, analysis or discussion. The activities of both of these companies are personally supervised by Michael Spiritus, the son of CIA officer Alan Spiritus, who we have already mentioned.

After creation of a new withdrawal scheme in 2017, I.V. Grishin quit Togliattiazot receiving a large cash allowance. He returned to Ernst & Young and currently works there. Mosaltsev, Obukhov, Dyukova and other members of the new team were also dismissed. Thus, as the authors of the scheme believed, they would exclude the possibility of any information leakage about it.

Yet, they miscalculated. As part of our investigation, this information has nevertheless been published.Accounting for all payments for the so-called charter services, about 60 million dollars are illegally withdrawn from Togliattiazot every year. Given the period of the contract - from December 2016 to December 2021, the amount of funds withdrawn may be USD 300 million.

According to available information, the Investigative Committee of Russia, the Federal Security Service, and the Federal Tax Service have already noticed the illegal schemes of cash withdrawal from Togliattiazot through charter agreements. It is possible that in the near future, new criminal cases will be opened in connection with the information that has been discovered. In this case, not only the beneficiaries of illegal schemes (Sergey and Vladimir Makhlais) but also performers (such as Dmitry Mezheedov), as well as their accomplices (Grishin, Mosaltsev, Obukhov, etc.) will be prosecuted. We can only hope that based on the results of these schemes investigation, money illegally withdrawn from the plant will be returned, and the perpetrators will receive the deserved punishment.

In the following articles of this series, we will continue to describe schemes and channels for profit withdrawing from Togliattiazot.

https://intpolicydigest.org/after-the-norilsk-spill-can-russia-turn-over-a-new-leaf-in-terms-of-esg/ 

Ben Nevin, JUNE 13, 2020

After the Norilsk Spill, can Russia Turn Over a New Leaf in Terms of ESG?

The waters of Siberia's Ambarnaya River have turned red after an accident at a thermal power plant owned by Nornickel spilled some 20,000 metric tons of diesel fuel into the waterway. The environmental disaster, which prompted Russian President Vladimir Putin to declare a state of emergency, would be severe enough on its own. It's compounded, however, by allegations that Nornickel covered up the incident in the crucial first days after it took place. Stunningly, the regional governor claims he only found out about the disaster after reading reports on social media.

It's still unclear how quickly the massive spill can be cleaned up. Experts have warned that organisms living in the river are already receiving a high dose of carcinogenic chemicals from the fuel, while Russia's environmental minister has cast doubt on Nornickel's claims that the pollution can be pumped out in 14 days, admitting that "the situation is dire." If the Arctic accident has shed fresh light on Nornickel's chequered environmental record, it's also highlighted how, while Russia has been making slow progress on environmental, social and governance (ESG) concerns, it still has a long way to go.

It's fitting that a Nornickel spill has put ESG issues back in centre stage, because the mining giant delivered the original wakeup call which prompted Russia, one of the world's largest producers of fossil fuels, to take a second look at ESG business practices. In 2011, Norway's state pension fund dumped its shares in Nornickel over the pollution the firm was engendering in the Arctic. Since then, the company has spent over $2 billion to clean up its emissions-though the recent accident shows that it still has work to do.

This shot across the bows of corporate Russia prompted the rest of the extraction industry to consider putting ESG policies in place and was arguably the genesis of a small but increasingly influential ESG movement within the country. For the first time, the 2019 edition of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum-Russia's premier business event-featured a panel on sustainability, highlighting the extent to which the concept of ESG have taken root in Russia. What's more, seven of Russia's ten largest firms are now hoping that launching ESG initiatives will help expand their investor base.

There are still plenty of Russian companies that are falling short on ESG, however. In April 2020, an industrial accident occurred at fertilizer giant TogliattiAzot on the Volga River. As a result of neglect and lack of capital investment, a reservoir containing highly toxic substances ignited, setting two workers ablaze-both of whom received burns covering 99% of their bodies, resulting in their deaths.

It was far from the first incident at the facility. At the same plant in March, a worker was buried alive when a dividing wall collapsed. Previously, a mechanical engineer died of ammonia poisoning, an explosion of a cistern containing 3,000 cubic meters of natural gas caused a massive fire at a Togliattiazot facility, and an industrial disaster of regional-scale was narrowly avoided following a separate gas leak at the plant's inbound pipeline. Last year, a long-overdue inspection by the industrial watchdog exposed flagrant violations of service life restrictions and maintenance guidelines and recommended urgent shutdown for repair works.

But this has been ignored by the management. The facility is owned by Vladimir and Sergey Makhlai, and Andreas Zivy, the owner of Swiss agribusiness Ameropa AG, all of whom have been convicted in absentia of fraud amid allegations of chronic underinvestment and mismanagement of the plant's production assets and currently live in the United States and Western Europe.

Not only have some of Russia's leading businesses failed to engage with ESG issues, but some have also even put pressure on the government to hold back on much-needed reforms. In October 2019, the Russian government diluted its new suite of climate change laws, set to be introduced as part of Russia's ratification of the Paris Climate Agreement, after concerted criticism from some of the country's leading businesses. In response to a concerted campaign by the influential Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs - one of the main lobbying groups for Russia's largest businesses, plans for quotas on carbon emissions at Russia's largest companies, which included a new national carbon trading system and penalties for the biggest polluters, were abolished. Instead, Russia only proceeded with proposals to measure and collect data on emissions as part of a five-year green audit.

The damaging press for Nornickel after its latest accident, however, has brought ESG issues back into the spotlight and emphasized that their importance will only continue to grow as investors, government, and citizens take a keener interest in the non-financial performance of companies and their interaction with the natural environment.

This growing focus on ESG will cause a particular problem for some of Russia's largest businesses, as a significant proportion derive their revenue from the extraction of minerals, metals, and fossil fuels. They will need to pull off a delicate balancing act to demonstrate impactful corporate action on ESG concerns while still remaining profitable. While Russia may be behind the curve of Western economies with regard to ESG, the era of a myopic focus on shareholder value creation to the detriment of everything else is drawing to a close. The steps taken in the coming years will define Russia's success in the transition to a greener economy and companies that stick to old habits may be left in the cold.

more in Czech

https://co-je-s-andrejem-babisem-mladsim.webnode.cz/co-je-s-andrejem-priloha-3/ 

Appendix 4 (in Czech)

https://co-je-s-andrejem-babisem-mladsim.webnode.cz/co-je-s-andrejem-priloha-4/ 

          Full Czech version

https://co-je-s-andrejem-babisem-mladsim.webnode.cz/podnet-vyboru-osn-pro-nasilna-zmizeni-ve-veci-andreje-babise-ml/