Slovakia and former Czech leader settle lawsuit over collaboration with communist secret police

PRAGUE (AP) - Slovakia's Interior Ministry agreed in a lawsuit settlement Monday that former former Czech populist Prime Minister Andrej Babis did not knowingly collaborate with communist-era secret police in what was then Czechoslovakia

The ministry said it acknowledged that any interpretations of documents in the archives of the StB secret police agency that Babis was a secret agent were unjustified

Babis welcomed the settlement of a case that dated to 2012. "I had no doubt that I'd win the dispute," he said.

Babis, who was born in Slovakia, was originally suing the Institute for National Memory, which holds parts of his secret police files following the division of Czechoslovakia into the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993.

In a decision published on Feb. 1, Slovakia's Constitutional Court, the highest legal authority in the country, upheld the previous rulings by lower courts dismissing the case.

Some of the files were destroyed, but the institute said those that still exist contain evidence that Babis was an agent under the code name "Bures" from 1982.

Babis vehemently denied that.

The regional court in the capital, Bratislava, originally rejected the lawsuit in 2018, but the Constitutional Court ordered a retrial, saying the institute could not be sued and the respondent should be the Slovak Interior Ministry.

The ministry said its decision was based on two legal analyses of the case.

Babis, a billionaire, is currently in opposition after his populist ANO centrist movement lost the 2021 parliamentary election. He was running to become the Czech president in the election for the largely ceremonial post in January last year but lost to Petr Pavel, a retired army general.