PRAGUE, March 5 (Reuters) – The lower house of the Czech parliament voted on Thursday to deny a court request for billionaire businessman and Prime Minister Andrej Babis to face trial in long-running prosecution over an alleged fraud in drawing a European Union subsidy.
Babis, head of the populist ANO party, returned to power after winning an election in October last year, despite charges in the case involving a 2 million euro subsidy granted in 2008, before he entered politics, for building a hotel and conference centre outside Prague called Stork Nest.
Deputies for ANO and ruling coalition partners, the far right, pro-Russian SPD party and the anti-Green Deal Motorists, voted on Thursday not to lift parliamentary immunity from Babis, voting records showed. The vote means Babis is protected from prosecution in the case until the end of the parliament’s four-year term in 2029.
(Reporting by Jan Lopatka; editing by Edward Tobin)
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