Babiš and the Pandora Papers
Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš has also been implicated in the offshore transactions scandal. He allegedly acquired a property on the Côte d'Azur via shell companies over ten years ago. The press discusses the potential impact on his image and this weekend's parliamentary elections.
The emperor has no clothes
Andrej Babiš has definitively lost the clean-cut image with which he entered politics, Deník notes:
“Andrej Babiš has been a leading representative of this country for eight years. He has continually waged a fight against tax havens and scoundrels who used offshore companies to their advantage. He substantiated his story by saying that he pays all of his corporate taxes in the Czech Republic. But out of the Pandora's box comprising the twelve million documents examined by the investigative journalists, a politician is now emerging of whom a child shouts out from the crowd: the emperor has no clothes.”
Core voters likely to remain loyal
The revelations are unlikely to affect the elections next weekend, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung believes:
“Babiš is adept at staging himself as the victim of machinations by an alleged establishment. Perhaps he is not so unhappy that his disastrous Covid crisis management is no longer being discussed. And so far his core voters, such as the pensioners pampered by his government, have remained unimpressed by the accusations of conflict of interest and subsidy fraud.”