The former Czech prime minister qualified despite a reputation marred by embezzlement allegations and questions about his role in the communist regime’s secret police.
Andrej Babis, chairman of the populist center party ANO and MP, meets on 27/28. January to former General Petr Pavel, who narrowly beat him in the first round. The winner of the election succeeds outgoing head of state Milos Zeman, a colorful personality known for his outspokenness and excessive drinking.
Babis, who comes from neighboring Slovakia, nevertheless assured that he would never run for the presidency: “I would not appreciate this work,” he explained.
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Babis is the country’s fifth fortune and grew rich by becoming the owner of sprawling food, chemical and media holding company Agrofert.
He made his political debut as chairman of his movement ANO! (YES!), campaigning for an anti-corruption agenda. The populist party entered parliament in 2013 and sits in the Renew group (centrists and liberals) in the European Parliament.
But Babis’ career is also littered with various allegations, which the businessman always denies and denounces as a “smear campaign”.
Babis was removed as finance minister, which he held from 2014 to 2017, after records were leaked showing he had influenced journalists working for his newspapers.
Charged with fraud involving $2 million in European subsidies, he was acquitted by a court in Prague in early January after six years of indictment.
He has also filed several lawsuits, alleging he was not an agent of the StB secret police in the 1980s, when former Czechoslovakia was ruled by communists under Moscow’s thumb. But the StB’s files bear his signature under the pseudonym “Bures,” a fairly common surname, and the courts have so far dismissed his claims.
He was prime minister from 2017 to 2021, resigning after his party narrowly lost the election and was won in power by the centre-right coalition.
Babis, father of four, is now a backbencher.
“Earn money”
Former communist Babis, who once served donuts to woo voters, has an estimated net worth of $4.3 billion, according to the 2022 Forbes list.
Thanks to a father who he says “co-founded foreign trade in Slovakia” during communism, Babis grew up traveling and attended primary school in Paris and secondary school in Geneva.
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Born in Bratislava on September 2, 1954, he says that he found his desire for work and money very early on: “I’ve been working since I was 15: I delivered milk, I unloaded packages at the train station, I decorated ‘I built weekend houses, all to make money’.
After studying economics, he followed in his father’s footsteps and worked as a sales representative in Morocco. After the Velvet Revolution that overthrew the totalitarian regime of Czechoslovakia in 1989, he returned home: his country was divided in two and he was unemployed.
Andrej Babis bought Agrofert in the early 2000s in a deal that raised some questions as the purchase price was felt by some to be far too low.