Babiš sues Slovakia over his listing as communist-era secret police agent

Czech Prime Minister-designate Andrej Babiš (ANO) has reportedly filed a lawsuit against Slovakia at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, in the latest chapter of a long-running dispute over whether he was falsely listed as an agent of Czechoslovakia’s communist-era police, the StB.

The Slovak-born billionaire maintains that while he did meet with the StB when he was an employee of a Czechoslovak foreign trade firm, he never pledged to cooperate with them.

In February, the Regional Court in Bratislava rejected Babiš’s petition arguing that he was wrongly listed as an StB agent in the records of the Slovak National Memory Institute (ÚPN), which handles historical archives.

That petition came in response to the Slovak Constitutional Court having last year overturned earlier verdicts from other courts which had accepted Mr. Babiš’s assertion he had been incorrectly listed.

Babiš had announced his intention to file suit at the court in Strasbourg on June 6, the same day on which he was re-appointed prime minister.

Author: Brian Kenety