Slovakia Party Aiming to Initiate No-confidence Motion in Sutaj Estok

Bratislava, October 22 (TASR) - The opposition Slovakia party wants to initiate a no-confidence motion in Interior Minister Matus Sutaj Estok (Voice-SD) over the settlement that the Interior Ministry has concluded in a dispute with Czech ex-premier Andrej Babis concerning unauthorised registration of Babis in the files of the erstwhile communist secret service the StB as its agent. According to the party, Sutaj Estok has repaid a debt to Babis, who supported former Voice-SD head Peter Pellegrini in the most recent presidential election in Slovakia. "Sutaj Estok and Babis are laughing in the face of victims of the [former communist] criminal regime and their descendants. We all know that Babis was an agent of the StB under the code name Bures and no decision by Sutaj Estok will change that," said Slovakia party MP Michal Sipos. The party pointed out that thanks to the settlement, Babis can do political campaigning in the Czech Republic and "show that he has a paper from the Slovak interior minister stating that he wasn't a collaborator of the StB". The Interior Ministry announced on Monday that it had reached a settlement with Babis in the above-mentioned dispute, acknowledging that the former Czech prime minister had been wrongfully registered as an agent of the StB under the code-name 'Bures' and that he had not knowingly cooperated with the secret service. Babis on the same day said that he'd never doubted that he would win the case, reiterating that he didn't cooperate with the StB and that there's no evidence to show otherwise. The UPN told TASR that the legitimacy of Babis's registration as a secret StB collaborator is proven by several StB files that are linked to each other in content and chronology. "The decision of the Interior Ministry to conclude a settlement with A. Babis does not change this fact," stressed the institute. zel/mcs