The State Agriculture Intervention Fund (SZIF) suspended the processing of applications for subsidies to companies from the Agrofert holding on 9 December, when President Petr Pavel appointed its owner, ANO leader Andrej Babis, as Prime Minister, the fund’s spokeswoman Eva Cespiva told CTK yesterday.
She said the situation would continue until Babis legally resolved the conflict of interest.
Agrofert spokesman Pavel Hermansky told CTK that the holding respected the decision of the administrative authorities.
Babis announced earlier that he would give up Agrofert due to the possible conflict of interest. In his words, he will have nothing more to do with the holding, and it will not return to him even after he leaves politics. The shares are to be managed by an independent trustee through a trust structure, and will be controlled by an independent protector. Both will be appointed independently. Babis’s descendants will acquire Agrofert only after his death.
Opposition politicians and some experts, however, question whether such a solution will actually cut Babis’s economic ties to Agrofert.
Babis should resolve his conflict of interest within 30 days of his appointment as prime minister, i.e. by 8 January 2026.
According to Cespiva, it is not possible to disclose the specific amount of money involved in the suspension of subsidies, as it concerns funds across subsidy programmes.
SZIF director Petr Dlouhy previously said that the move would apply to compensation for farming in places with poor soil quality, for instance. In the first phase, he said, companies from Agrofert would miss out on funding of about CZK 100 million.
SZIF previously suspended subsidies to Agrofert due to Babis’s conflict of interest in 2019, when he was the prime minister for his first term. The companies from the holding challenged the decision in court.
