and Jan Klenor as his most famous victim.



King Henry II of England: He merely questioned Thomas Becket's right to live.

Andrej Babis claims today (in his own newspaper, naturally!) that by calling Jan Klenor a frontman for the real investors behind the news server, ECHO24, he was merely questioning whether Klenor is the true investor.

These are his exact words at yesterday's cabinet press conference: "Doufám, že váš bílý kůň, ten Klenor, protože se povídá ledacos, kdo to financuje, má dostatečně velké majetkové přiznání, aby prokázal potom ty vaše náklady." In English, this translates as "I hope that your frontman, this Klenor guy, has sufficient asset declarations to cover ECHO24’s costs." (Babis's language is hard to translate because it makes little sense in Czech, but most assume him to mean that he hopes Klenor can prove the origins of his wealth.)

Pinch yourself, dear reader. Then remember who Babis is and where he was when he merely questioned the integrity of a private individual, who has invested his money in a media project that competes with the media business owned by Andrej Babis.

A finance minister, standing alongside his country’s prime minister and foreign minister in front of the assembled media cannot merely question the veracity of a private individual’s tax returns. Because of who he is and where he said it, Babis’s statement amounts to a devastating assault on the good name of a fellow citizen, a competitor and a private person.

Babis's Thomas Becket moment

How will the finance minister’s subordinates in the ministry interpret his words? Will they understand his words to be an expression of their minister’s wish to see Jan Klenor investigated for tax fraud? The law expressly forbids the finance minister from instructing FAU to launch an investigation into specific people and institutions.

And so what? Who needs an executive order to act against the enemies of your minister and political patron? English law in the 12th Century forbade King Henry II from ordering his knights to murder Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170. He still got done in.

Henry reputedly said this: "What miserable drones and traitors have I nourished and brought up in my household, who let their lord be treated with such shameful contempt by a low-born cleric?" And whatever the king said, four of his knights interpreted his words to be a royal command to murder an archbishop.

How will Andrej Babis’s journalists interpret his words? Will he harangue the hacks at Lidove noviny as miserable drones and traitors for allowing their owner to be treated with such shameful contempt by a conman called Klenor?

And above all, how would a court of law interpret them, in the event that Jan Klenor sues Andrej Babis? Could a prosecutor prove in a court of law that the interest of the finance minister in eliminating fraud had been supplanted by his interest, as an Agrofert shareholder, in eliminating competition? I doubt it. Think how easy it would be for the defendant’s lawyers to show that the fulfilment of the second objective, while possibly good for their client as an Agrofert shareholder, was an unintended consequence of the fulfilment of his duties as finance minister.

Within four years of Becket’s murder, the English were in revolt, and King Henry was seeking God's (and the public's) forgiveness at the tomb of England’s most famous martyr. In short, Andrej Babis’s arrogance will be judged in the court of public opinion. Which is why he needs all his own newspapers, and to silence ECHO24.

In a private telephone call last night, Andrej Babis admitted to Erik Tabery of Respekt that he had been unwise. "I spoke rubbish, I shouldn't have said it. It was a mistake". But what is required is a public apology.