Czech PM vows to never resign over fraud probe

Bloomberg

The Czech Republic’s billionaire prime minister rejected intensifying calls for him step down as he tries to save his hard-won coalition from collapsing amid public outcry over an investigation into whether he committed fraud.
The fraud probe has imperiled the political career of Andrej Babis since his upstart ANO party defeated its traditional mainstream rivals in elections a year ago. The media, chemicals and agriculture tycoon’s promises to root out corruption and block immigrants have helped make him the country’s most popular politician. But his anti-refugee stance has also nudged him closer to a group of nationalist leaders in the region that are challenging the European Union’s liberal and multicultural values.
Babis’s minority government will face its biggest test of unity next week in a no-confidence motion organised by the opposition after his son claimed that his father tried to hide him from the probe into the alleged misuse of European Union aid funds. Babis has rejected the allegations, saying his son is mentally ill and reporters who tapped him on a hidden camera behaved unethically.
“I will never resign, never,” Babis said in remarks broadcast by the public television from government headquarters in Prague. “Let everyone remember that.”