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About the project
Impérium AB (Empire AB) is an emerging database of companies belonging to Andrej Babiš: companies which Andrej Babiš owned and later transferred to the trust funds AB private trust I and AB private trust II. Andrej Babiš moved his companies to the trust funds in 2017 during his term as Minister of Finance to comply with the Czech Act No. 14/2017 Coll.
The database also includes an overview of European subsidies these companies drew when Andrej Babiš owned them and a list of people active in these companies.
The Impérium AB project aims to show more transparently the business ties and interests that may affect the performance of Andrej Babiš's public office.
The project resulted from the Open-source Investigation and Intelligence seminar led by Josef Šlerka and Pavla Holcová (investigace.cz) during the summer semester 2019/2020 at Institute of Information Studies and Librarianship, Faculty of Arts, Charles University. The database was produced by 19 students, mostly from the master's program of the New Media Studies course.
Expansion of the database was supported by Nadační fond nezávislé žurnalistiky.
Data sources
The seminar focused mostly on working with open sources. We worked with the business registers of individual states (Slovak, Czech, German etc.) and the relevant annual reports of respective companies if these were accessible. We also used aggregators of company data such as the Slovak Finstat, OpenCorporates or the Cribis database. Data on Czech companies were drawn from the Czech database Hlídač státu.
Data on subsidies from EU funds are drawn from public initiatives consolidating the European Union's subsidy data and from published lists of subsidy recipients by individual funds administrators. The public initiatives sources include:
- Hlídač státu consolidates data on subsidies to Czech entities from both EU agricultural funds and other ESIF funds.
- Farmsubsidy.org consolidates data on subsidies from the agricultural funds EAFRD and EAGF of all EU member states, currently contains information until 2013.
- Subsidystories.eu publishes consolidated data concerning some recipients of subsidies from ESIF funds, mostly those from 2007-2013, from all EU member states.
- Ekosystém.Slovensko.Digital processes, among other things, data from the ITMS2014+ system, i.e. data on subsidies to Slovak entities from ESIF funds from 2014-2020.
The contained data on subsidy recipients cover only limited periods depending on the country and the fund. For the Czech Republic and Slovakia, we have data on recipients until 2018 and 2020, respectively, except data on recipients of Slovak agricultural subsidies, which are so far available only until 2013. The Table of Subsidy Data gives an overview of the availability of data so far. Subsidies awarded outside the periods listed in the table are not yet in the database.
In the Persons section, the date of birth and the full address of residence is displayed only to registered users. To register, please send an email to Nina Kodhajová on nina@investigace.cz.
Overview of data in the database
| Země / Country | Nalezených právnických osob / Found legal entities | Nalezených fyzických osob / Found people | Nalezených dotací / Found subsidies | Suma dotací [EUR] / Subsidies sum [EUR] |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Czechia | 610 | 92 | 10268 | 1 219 184 549,00 |
| Germany | 15 | 0 | 9 | 484 961,68 |
| Hungary | 27 | 0 | 40 | 7 161 696,31 |
| Poland | 9 | 5 | 1 | 90 674,22 |
| Slovakia | 84 | 19 | 473 | 48 652 514,52 |
| United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland | 5 | 0 | 0 | |
| Other countries | 34 | 9 | 1 | 83 977,00 |
| Celkem / Total | 784 | 125 | 10792 | 1 275 658 372,73 |
Table of Subsidy Data
| Agricultural funds (EAGF & EAFRD) | Other ESIF funds (ESF & ERDF) | |
|---|---|---|
| Czech Republic | 2014-2018 – data from The state agricultural intervention fund (https://www.szif.cz/en/) processed by Hlídač státu | 2004-2018 – data from European Funds Portal (https://dotaceeu.cz/en/home-en) processed by Hlídač státu |
| Slovakia | 2004-2013 – data from Farmsubsidy.org | 2007-2013 – data from Subsidystories.eu, details here 2014-2020 – data from ITMS2014+ (https://www.itms2014.sk/) processed by Ekosystém.Slovensko.Digital |
| Germany | 2002-2013 – data from Farmsubsidy.org | 2007-2015 – data from Subsidystories.eu, definitely not complete, details here |
| Hungary | 2008-2013 – data from Farmsubsidy.org | 2000-2015 – data from Subsidystories.eu, details here |
| Poland | 2004-2013 – data from Farmsubsidy.org | 2007-2015 – data from Subsidystories.eu, details here |
| Other EU countries | In worst case only 2008-2013, but often also earlier – data from Farmsubsidy.org | Most often 2007-2015 – data from Subsidystories.eu, details here |