page_title: Andrej Babiš
section_title: Cooperation with StB
hierarchical_section_title: Andrej Babiš / Controversies / Cooperation with StB
caption_attribution_description: English: March and demonstration for polite Czech Republic – for demission of Andrej Babiš Čeština: Pochod a demonstrace za slušné Česko - pro Demisi Andreje Babiše; organizováno spolkem Milion chvilek pro demokracii, Staroměstské náměstí, 17. listopadu 2018
context_page_description: Andrej Babiš is a Czech politician serving as the Prime Minister of the Czech Republic since December 2017 and the founding leader of ANO 2011 since 2012. He previously served as Minister of Finance and Deputy Prime Minister from 2014 to 2017. Prior to entering politics, he was a businessman.
  Born in Bratislava in present-day Slovakia, Babiš moved to the Czech Republic following the Velvet Revolution. During a lengthy business career, he rose to become the second richest man in the Czech Republic, with an estimated net worth of about $4.04 billion according to Bloomberg. Much of this wealth came from his time as CEO and owner of the Agrofert Group, which owns two of the largest Czech newspapers, Mladá fronta DNES and Lidové noviny.
  Babiš entered politics in 2012, forming ANO 2011. Despite being a new party, ANO 2011 performed strongly at the 2013 election, finishing just three seats behind winners ČSSD. He was duly appointed Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance by Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka. In May 2017, Sobotka sacked Babiš following a crisis triggered by allegations that Babiš avoided paying taxes when CEO of Agrofert.
context_section_description: According to the documents of the National Memory Institute in Slovakia, Babiš collaborated with the State Security Police (StB) of communist Czechoslovakia, under the code name agent Bureš. He denies the accusations, and in 2012 sued the institute for defamation. In January 2018, the Bratislava regional court ruled definitively that Babiš was an StB agent. This final court case may not be appealed.
   
  Twelve unrelated cases investigated by StB from 1982 to 1985 were associated with the code name Bureš, according to the Slovak National Memory Institute. Babiš appeared once at the court during the process. The District Court in Bratislava issued a ruling on 26 June 2014 that there was insufficient evidence to put Andrej Babiš on a list of intentional cooperators with StB. The decision was criticised in the Slovak press, and the National Memory Institute announced it would appeal to a higher court. On 30 June 2015, Bratislava's County Court upheld the verdict, but in October 2017 the Slovak Constitutional Court upheld the National Memorial Institute's appeal, annulling the earlier court decisions and finding that Babiš had been an agent of the former communist secret police.
  Babiš has also been accused of using his StB background and Communist Party connections to enrich himself. Babiš has denied that he was a StB collaborator, but his close associates include Czech lawyer Libor Široký, now chairman of Agrofert's supervisory board, who is reportedly also a former member of one of the StB units most closely linked to the Soviet KGB. Critics who accuse him of KGB connections also point to his alleged support for the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea, and his opposition to international sanctions against Russia. When a Lebanese arms dealer with alleged Russian connections was released by Czech authorities instead of being extradited to the United States, and it was revealed that every official involved in the release was an ANO party member or was associated with Babis, he was again accused of having an allegiance to Russia. Opposition MP Miroslav Kalousek said that it no longer mattered what information the Slovak National Memory Institute had about Babiš, because his behaviour as a politician had proven his StB training.
  In March 2015, Babiš condemned Russia's annexation of Crimea. In October 2015 Anne Applebaum, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist specializing in Russian and Eastern European affairs, listed Babiš among several Eastern European leaders who she considered to be agents of influence for Putin's Russia. Writing in The Washington Post, she suggested that old labels from Soviet Communist days, such as "useful idiots" and "fellow travelers", were no longer adequate to describe Babis and the other figures she had named. To illustrate her point, she listed several quotes from each leader that sounded very similar to each other and to the arguments broadcast at the same time by official Russian news sources.
  Babiš responded to Applebaum with a letter to The Washington Post stating that he had no friends in Russia and was an American ally. US journalist Gabriel Meyr challenged those claims by citing three examples of actions Babiš has taken that have furthered Russian policy goals, such as a Czech government loan guarantee to a Russian company with a record of defaults, owned by a close friend of President Putin. Another example was the Czech Finance Ministry's continued racing of the thoroughbred horses owned by Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, a close ally of Putin, even though he is under international sanctions. The final example was that Babis had disclosed in 2007 that Agrofert was negotiating to purchase gas from the Czech subsidiary of Gazprom instead of its German supplier.
  In February 2016, on the day commemorating the Communist takeover in 1948, hundreds of protesters opposed to Babiš gathered in Wenceslas Square to protest that Babiš was advancing an agenda that would infringe Czech freedoms, described by leaders of the protest as a quiet revolution, happening in gradual steps.
caption: Protest against Babiš in Prague, 17 November 2018
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