The Mayors and Independents (STAN) and their chairman, Interior Minister Vit Rakusan, will remove posts from the internet that claimed that the Agrofert Group was eavesdropping on them, as announced by Agrofert and STAN in a joint statement today marking the settlement of the dispute.
According to the statement, the allegations proved to be unfounded. Rakusan mentioned the company, owned in trust by former Prime Minister Andrej Babiš (ANO) in connection with a case concerning encrypted telephones. Agrofert filed a lawsuit against him and his party, which was dealt with by the municipal court in Prague.
“On 24 September 2023, Vit Rakusan published statements about Agrofert a.s. on his profile on the social network X and on the STAN website, which at least gave the impression that this company had been eavesdropping on him and other members of STAN. Agrofert a.s. rejected these allegations and filed a lawsuit against Vit Rakusan and the STAN movement to protect its reputation,” read the joint statement.
“As these allegations have proven to be unfounded, the parties to the dispute have agreed that Vit Rakusan and STAN will remove the article and the post containing the allegations from the website,” the two parties added.
Rakusan mentioned Agrofert in his answers to questions from MF Dnes, published on the STAN website last year. A journalist for the daily asked Rakusan why he had an encrypted phone, which was allegedly acquired for him by STAN MEP Stanislav Polcak.
“Stanislav Polcak brought me a phone with a special application because after the elections to the Chamber of Deputies we had quite significant indications that our communications were being intercepted,” Rakusan said. “At the time we were negotiating the shape of the government, and we did not need the details of those negotiations to be known by Agrofert’s notorious security division. This was supposed to be one of the ways to better secure the communications of the negotiating team.”
Rakusan also referred to the published answers on Twitter (now ‘X’), where he stated, among other things, that “at the time of forming the government and taking power from ANO, we were concerned that we were being spied on by Agrofert’s security division.”
Agrofert’s lawsuit was heard by the Prague municipal court in early May. The judge said at the time that Rakusan and STAN must prove the truth of their statements. Another hearing was supposed to take place this week on Monday, but was cancelled due to the parties’ out-of-court negotiations.
