Author: Vojtěch Berger, HlidaciPes.org, Czech republic
On the sidelines of the recent inauguration of the new Slovak President, Peter Pellegrini, a more intimate meeting of politicians took place. Slovak Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Environment Tomáš Taraba went to a “friendly lunch” with the former Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš. Given Taraba’s political biography and the extensive business interests of Babiš’s Agrofert-holding in Slovakia, it would have been a mistake to let this meeting go unnoticed.
Bratislava is small and the meeting, according to the photos published by the minister, took place in a restaurant just a few streets away from the presidential inauguration in the city centre. The informal meeting is interesting for several reasons.
The first is Taraba’s pragmatism and gradual building of political influence. Although outwardly he is accepting the position of number two in the Slovak National Party behind Andrej Danko, it is clear from many of his statements that his political ambitions are higher. All the more so after the SNS’s recent debacle in the European elections, where the party won just 1.9 percent of the vote.
Taraba was elected on a nationalist ticket into the current parliament. However, in the last parliamentary term he ran for Marian Kotleba’s extremist party, only to spend much of his mandate as an unaffiliated MP with doors open to the left and right. Such a pragmatist with a flair for the merchant’s calculations is definitely Babiš’s blood type.
Who will clean up Istrochem
Also worth noting in Taraba’s CV is his long-standing acquaintance and business partnership with Peter Košč, alias “Mr X”, considered one of the main figures in the so-called war of the police, which escalated in Slovakia last year before the elections. Košč, with connections to the highest levels of the police and secret services, is currently charged in a bribery case.
A third reason to take note of the meeting is Taraba’s ministerial affiliation. The Ministry of the Environment can have a significant influence on Agrofert’s business.
That is to say, the holding company which Andrej Babiš says he has not controlled for a long time thanks to trust funds, although the registry entries which list him as the end user of Agrofert’s benefits or its real owner say otherwise.
Four years ago, under the government of Igor Matovič, it was revealed that the Slovak authorities would demand roughly half a billion euros from Agrofert for the remediation of chemical damage under the site of the former Istrochem chemical plant in Bratislava. Agrofert defended itself by saying that it did not cause the environmental damage, that has its origin in the socialism-era of the former Czechoslovak state.
Last year, shortly after coming to power, the government of Robert Fico approved an amendment to the law that relieves landowners of the obligation to bear the costs of removing environmental damage in similar cases. The bill was introduced by none other than Tomáš Taraba.
For the sake of completeness, let us add that former President Zuzana Čaputová also had a problem with the law in its previous form and turned to the Constitutional Court because of it. However, Čaputová was not concerned with defending the interests of chemical companies. She argued that the law in its previous version shifted too much of the burden of the costs of environmental damage to landowners – including municipalities, for whom it could be devastating.
Key relationships with the state
Babiš’s Agrofert’s agri-food and chemical business in Slovakia, like that of other big players, depends on good relations with the state. This was also proven in the case of the huge tax break for Babiš’s chemical company Duslo Šaľa.
The tax incentive of EUR 58.56 million (CZK 1.5 billion) was approved by Robert Fico’s second cabinet in 2014. “Only EUR 1.3 million had been used by the end of 2021,” Agrofert spokesman Pavel Heřmanský told HlídacíPes.org last year.
He added, however, that Agrofert still has plenty of time to use the incentive. „The amendment to the law on investment aid extended the period of possible drawdown by three years, i.e. until 2029, due to the covid-19 pandemic.”
But it’s not just chemical industry. Last year, the Slovak competition authority fined Agrofert’s Penam bakery group half a billion CZK. This brought to an end an investigation into the suspicious takeover of two bakeries in Bratislava and Žilina after several years.
Although the authority banned the purchase in 2012, Agrofert, then still officially led by Babiš, acquired the two bakeries in the following years in a roundabout way without notifying the authority. The Bratislava bakery was bought by a small company founded by lawyers close to Babiš. The same happened with the Žilina plant.
Penam appealed against the high fine, but the legal deadline for a decision is a long three years, which is still within the timeframe of the current Fico government. In the meantime, Fico’s cabinet, specifically SNS chief Andrej Danko and the aforementioned deputy prime minister Taraba, are talking loudly about abolishing or merging what they consider inefficient authorities – including the competition authority.
Direct line to the President
The opposition sees it more as creating a chance for cronies and replacing expertise with a party book. In any case, thanks to his contacts with Taraba and Co., Andrej Babiš can have first-hand information about the direction in which institutions crucial for regulating his business are heading.
However, in addition to his connections to the Slovak government, Babiš can also theoretically count on a “direct line” to the presidential palace under Peter Pellegrini. Besides the fact that Babiš explicitly endorsed Pellegrini before the elections, one of the presidential advisers in Bratislava could be the writer Jozef Banáš, who knows Babiš well.
The Czech ex-prime minister helped launch some of Banáš’s books on the Czech market and this year, before the second round of the Slovak presidential elections, Banáš moderated a light-hearted talk show in support of Peter Pellegrini, in which, in addition to Babiš, presidential candidate Pellegrini also appeared.
Babiš and Banáš have one more thing in common – their registration in the StB’s associates’ lists. They both claim that the entry is unjustified, and Babiš wants to continue to sue in Slovakia over this matter.
Babiš’s concern for his „former“ company
It is worth remembering that Babiš, by supporting Pellegrini, is also supporting (and obliging) the Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, who needed to put Pellegrini in the presidential seat to complete his power tandem.
Fico, currently recovering from injuries sustained in a recent assassination attempt, had already been able to rely on Babiš’s kind words and social media reach before the parliamentary elections last year. Babiš on the other hand was able to rely on Fico’s support during his „Stork’s Nest“ case – a possible misuse of EU subvention by one of Babiš’s companies in Czech Republic.
Babiš’s participation in Pellegrini’s inauguration in Bratislava thus resembles more than anything else another piece of a long chain of mutual favours and counter-favours on the route Fico-Babiš (and more recently Pellegrini).
All this against the backdrop of Agrofert’s business interests, which Babiš obviously still has at heart, although he himself claims that it is no longer his holding. Given the current political situation and parties support in the Czech Republic, Fico and co. are playing for nothing less than a superior relationship with the likely next winner of the Czech parliamentary elections. And Babiš, for his part, is fighting for the branching business of his “former” company in Slovakia.
