“Of course, I could have left politics after winning the election and had a comfortable life, or ANO could have appointed someone else as prime minister,” Babi\u0161 said Thursday night in a video address to voters.<\/p>\n
“But I am convinced that you would perceive it as a betrayal,” he added. “That is why I have decided to irrevocably give up the Agrofert company, with which I will no longer have anything to do, I will never own it, I will not have any economic relations with it, and I will not be in any contact with it.”<\/p>\n
Babi\u0161’ ascension to the Czech premiership further tilts Central Europe in an anti-establishment direction, as the populist tycoon joins Hungary’s Viktor Orb\u00e1n and Slovakia’s Robert Fico as potential thorns in Brussels’ side on key EU files.<\/p>\n
In stepping back from Agrofert, however, Babi\u0161 made clear the importance of retaking the prime ministerial role. The holding’s shares will now be managed through a trust structure by an independent administrator.<\/p>\n
“This step, which goes far beyond the requirements of the law, was not easy for me. I have been building my company for almost half my life and I am very sorry that I will also have to step down as chairman of the Agrofert Foundation,”\u00a0Babi\u0161 said.<\/p>\n
“My children will only get Agrofert after my death,” he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“Of course, I could have left politics after winning the election and had a comfortable life, or ANO…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":425430,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[2906,198152,198153,136729,198154,14609,40108,820,198155,50,103],"class_list":{"0":"post-425429","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-agriculture","9":"tag-andrej-babis","10":"tag-common-agricultural-policy-cap","11":"tag-conflict-of-interest","12":"tag-czech-politics","13":"tag-czech-republic","14":"tag-eu-funding","15":"tag-fraud","16":"tag-general-petr-pavel","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115664529896875814","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=425429"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425429\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/425430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=425429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=425429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=425429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}