Czech PM under fire over Pandora Papers as vote looms

Rivals slammed Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis on Monday over allegations he used offshore tax havens to hide millions, but analysts said the billionaire was still likely to win a weekend general election.

Ranked as the sixth-wealthiest Czech according to the local "Euro" financial weekly, Babis was among 35 current and former politicians featured in the so-called Pandora Papers published by media worldwide on Sunday.

Investigative journalists said Babis, a farming and chemicals tycoon, had used 15 million euros ($17.4 million) from his offshore firms to buy property in southern France in 2009.

The Czech national organised crime headquarters said Monday it was launching a probe.

But Babis insisted he has "never done anything illegal or wrong" and slammed the allegations as a smear campaign against him and his ANO (YES) party that is tipped to win the October 8-9 vote.

"Laundering hundreds of millions via tax havens? YES!" read a parody of Babis's ANO (YES) party posters posted by Pirate Party chief Ivan Bartos on his Facebook page.

"Andrej Babis collects (criminal) cases like Pokemons," tweeted Marketa Pekarova Adamova from the centre-right Together grouping.

Jan Hamacek, whose left-wing Social Democrats currently form a minority government with ANO, said he hoped Babis "does not preach water in the Czech Republic while drinking wine in tax havens".

CONFLICT OF INTEREST

Analysts said the scandal was unlikely to sway Babis's base and so torpedo his expected victory in the election, dominated by the economic fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic.

"Babis fans have forgiven him on many occasions, and this will be another one," Otto Eibl, a political analyst at Masaryk University in Brno, told AFP.

Babis, a former Communist listed as a secret police collaborator in the 1980s, is also facing charges over EU subsidy fraud and Brussels' ire over his conflict of interest as a businessman and politician.

"Babis's hardline voters will accept his explanation, so it won't endanger his election result," said Josef Mlejnek, an analyst at Charles University in Prague.

Eibl said the scandal was also unlikely to sway President Milos Zeman, a staunch Babis ally, who taps the new prime minister under the constitution and has already publicly suggested he will choose the mogul.

Babis's ANO topped the final pre-election opinion poll published Sunday with 25 percent support, ahead of Together and an alliance of the Pirates with the centrist Mayors and Independents.

Mlejnek said the Pandora Papers scandal could even help Babis form a governing coalition as undecided voters may choose smaller parties on the brink of entering parliament, rather than ANO.

"He'll be better off with 25 percent and a few small partners than with 30 percent on his own," the analyst told AFP.