Over 2,000 Protesters In Prague Urge Prime Minister To Resign Amid Fraud Probe - Organizer

PRAGUE (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 16th November, 2018) Over 2,000 people took to streets in Prague on Thursday calling on Prime Minister Andrej Babis to step down amid a fraud probe into him, the spokeswoman of the AUVA group that organized the rally said.

"We have called people willing to express their protest over the current situation, to say their 'No' to a person who is under investigation and who has repeatedly been caught red-handed being at the helm of the government," Veronika Sevcikova said.

The most large-scale protests against Babis are, however, expected to be held on Saturday. They will be timed to the 29th anniversary of the beginning of the revolution that resulted in the end of the communist rule in Czechoslovakia.

On Tuesday, the leaders of six Czech opposition parties issued a joint statement calling on the government to resign due to Babis' alleged move to kidnap his son and take him to Crimea in order to prevent him from testifying in the fraud probe.

While Babis has denied these allegations, noting that his son said about the alleged kidnapping because he suffered from a mental illness, the opposition forces plan to raise this issue at the lower house session the next week.

The upper house, in its turn, adopted a decree urging Babis to resign before the end of the investigation into him, on Thursday.

Babis was stripped from impunity in January in the case where he is suspected of removing a company from his agricultural giant Agrofert for receiving some 2 million Euros ($2.2 million) in EU subsidies before returning the firm back into the conglomerate. Babis has denied the fraud allegations saying the case was politically motivated.