Former Communist secret police officer says Andrej Babiš not recruited as agent

A former chief of the Communist era secret police, (StB) testified in court on Monday that minister of finance Andrej Babiš was not recruited as an agent in the 1980’s. Július Šuman was giving evidence in the minister’s attempts to disprove material released from Slovak archives suggesting he was recruited under the codename Bureš. The former police officer said that a reported meeting at a Bratislava restaurant where Bureš was said to have been recruited never took place. Babiš has taken out a libel action against the Slovak Nation’s Memory Institute, which stores the country’s secret police archives. A verdict in the case was not expected Monday.