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| - A Czech prosecutor said Thursday that the case of the billionaire prime minister's conflict of interest as an entrepreneur and politician has been forwarded to the new EU prosecutor's office. The independent, Luxembourg-based European Public Prosecutor's Office (EPPO) was launched on June 1 to crack down on the fraudulent use of EU funds and other financial crimes. "Concerning your query, report forms on two matters have been sent to the newly established EPPO," Prague prosecutor Boris Havel told AFP without elaborating. The European Commission said in an audit report in April that Andrej Babis had a conflict of interest in his dual role as prime minister and the owner of the Agrofert food, chemicals and media holding. Babis, the Czech Republic's fifth wealthiest person whose minority cabinet survived a no-confidence vote Thursday, has denied any wrongdoing. He has insisted he transferred Agrofert to two trust funds in February 2017, when he was finance minister, under a Czech anti-corruption law dubbed "Lex Babis". But publicly available documents show he is still Agrofert's beneficial owner. The European Commission concluded that Babis exercised "a decisive influence over the trust funds", urging "a 100-percent financial correction" for all grants awarded to Agrofert after February 2017. The allegations, coupled with poor handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, led the Czech opposition to initiate a parliamentary vote of no confidence in Babis's government on Thursday. Babis withstood the motion as the opposition only mustered 89 votes in the 200-seat parliament after the Communists, who recently stopped backing Babis's cabinet, said they would not participate in the vote. Even if Babis had lost the vote, nothing would have changed as President Milos Zeman, Babis's ally, has made it clear he would let Babis continue until a general election scheduled for October 8-9. Josef Mlejnek, an analyst at Charles University in Prague, said the no-confidence motion made sense as part of the election campaign. "The opposition wants to highlight the government's mistakes. But it's a mere rhetoric exercise now that the Communists have left the room," he told AFP. Babis leads a minority government of his centrist populist ANO (YES) movement and the leftwing Social Democrats. A former Communist who was registered as a secret police collaborator in the 1980s, Babis is also facing police charges over alleged EU subsidy fraud involving his farm. During the 14-hour parliamentary session on Thursday, he took a swipe at the EU, saying "no one from abroad will horn in on our affairs". "We don't want the European Parliament, green fanatics, to manage our country," Babis said. After topping opinion polls with 30-percent backing for years, Babis's ANO has recently lost favour over the government's handling of the coronavirus crisis. Last weekend, ANO came third in a poll by the Kantar CZ agency with 19-percent support, trailing two opposition coalitions comprising the five parties that initiated the no-confidence vote. frj/har
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