A bizarre scandal involving claims that Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš had his own son kidnapped and held in Crimea to hide his involvement in a corruption scheme is threatening to topple the government in Prague.
The Czech opposition has called on Babiš to resign and said it would hold a no-confidence vote after journalists claimed that Babiš had ordered the abduction of his son.
The corruption scandal involves a business group owned by the Babiš family called Agrofert, which bought a 19th century farmstead in 2007 to develop into a luxury hotel called the Stork’s Nest. The company that was building the hotel then formally left Agrofert, and in 2008 received a 2-million-euro grant from the European Union’s subsidies to small business fund. The money was worth a seventh of the total cost of construction.
When news of the possible fraud came out, Babiš denied any involvement in, or knowledge of the construction project. But a news report on Nov. 6 by the iROZHLAS.cz website revealed more evidence of the role that the prime minister played in the alleged misappropriation of EU funds, dubbed by reporters “the Stork’s Nest case.”
A week later, Czech newspaper Seznam Zpravy published an interview conducted in Switzerland with the prime minister’s son, also named Andrej Babiš, who is a key witness in the Stork Nest probe.
In the interview, which was published on Nov. 13, the younger Babiš said that after the corruption scandal broke, his father “wanted him to disappear.” He said he had been kidnapped while in Crimea, a Ukrainian peninsula illegally occupied by Russia, by Petr Protopopov, the Russian husband of Dita Protopopova, a member of his father’s ANO political party.
A Prague local council member and a psychiatrist by occupation, Protopopova allegedly signed a medical report stating that the younger Babiš had mental health issues, which prevented him giving testimony in the Stork’s Nest case. Protopopova resigned after the Seznam Zpravy interview was published.
“She told me: ‘You have the choice – either we lock you in the National Institute for Mental Health, or you go on vacation. I chose holidays,” the younger Babiš told Seznam Zpravy. “He (Protopopov) told me in Ukraine, ‘Your father and I will do everything to keep you locked up.’”
He also admitted that he had signed papers for the Stork’s Nest, but said he didn’t know what he was signing.
The prime minister denied his son’s claims, insisting that he is mentally ill and needs treatment. According to a report in the UK Guardian on Nov. 13, the younger Babiš has a history of mental illness.
Czech Supreme Public Prosecutor Pavel Zeman told local media that the alleged abduction of the younger Babiš would be investigated.
The Czech parliament opposition said it would push for a no-confidence vote against the prime minister. However, the government coalition, comprised of the ANO, the Social Democrats, and the Communist party, still commands a majority in the Czech parliament.
