When the Gorilla dossier appeared on the internet before Christmas 2011, it sparked controversy, which triggered civil protests in Slovakia and eventually significant political changes.
It was an alleged (I have to use this word only for the sake of Penta’s legal jihad) file of the Slovak Information Service (SIS), which contained recordings of the Gorilla operation. It took place in 2005-2006. A significant result of the wiretapping of the conspiratorial flat in Bratislava was, among other things, the discovery that financiers from the Penta group had communicated with representatives of the government parties and the opposition about the promotion of privatisations and laws favourable to the group. At the same time, they talked openly about financing the parties with which they communicated. Although the case fell hardest on Mikuláš Dzurinda’s SDKÚ, the fact is that the incoming hegemon Robert Fico also visited the apartment.
In one of the recordings he boasted about how many millions of euros he had raised for the campaign “with his own head”. Fico and Haščák discussed the patrons of Smer, Juraj Široký, Vladimír Poor, Ivan Kyn and their business. The illegal financing of the party through Fedor Flašík, who, according to Fico, “collected 250 for the party”, was also mentioned. In the recordings, Fico also assures the Penta founders that they can count on “their health care man” Pavel Paska – the now-deceased Košice oligarch, health care boss and former speaker of parliament – for the long term.
Haščák from Penta, various ministers and high-ranking people, whether from the government of the time or the opposition. In this web of relations, the following companies were discussed for privatisation: the M. R. Štefánik Airport, Transpetrol, Rozvodné závody – Východoslovenská, Stredoslovenská and Západoslovenská energetika – VSE, SSE and ZSE, Slovenská elektrizační přenosová soustava, a.s. – SEPS and others.
It was the case of airport privatisation that was stopped – just as it was with the health reforms. In connection with the purchase of the Bratislava and Košice airports, former transport minister Pavol Prokopovič was to be blackmailed. He denied it, despite the testimony of a witness, a former manager of Bratislava airport. According to him, Penta pressured Prokopovic to sell Bratislava and Košice airports to it and not to J&T.
From November 2010 to July 2011, the Office for the Fight against Corruption investigated the Gorilla case, after which the military prosecutor’s office took over and closed the investigation. By August 2011, the case was considered closed. One of the reasons for the early closure was the non-cooperation of SIS director Karel Mitrik, who refused to release members of the secret service from confidentiality. It is clear that they were the main link in the case and would indeed have had something to comment on. Soon the fateful date came and someone unknown published the Gorilla and Gorilla I files on the Internet. The then Interior Minister Daniel Lipšic decided to set up a ten-member team of investigators, which was supervised exclusively by the Special Prosecutor’s Office.
The team was composed of criminologists from the Office for the Fight against Organized Crime, the Office for the Fight against Corruption and the Inspectorate. The team was headed by Marek Gajdoš. The whole case was supervised by special prosecutor Dušan Kováčik; he was later convicted of corruption and cooperation with a Bratislava mafia gang.
Lipšic did not prevent the Prosecutor General’s Office from creating its own investigative team. The only consolation in this confusion of teams was that Attorney General Dobroslav Trnka, who lobbied for the failure to investigate the case, did not get involved. His statement on Gorilla was as follows: “We are investigating an unproven and unprovable, perhaps some kind of intelligence game, and I wonder which prosecutor will sign off on it.”
Lipšic’s team expanded and sometimes even contracted in the following years, accompanied by speculation about pressure from the new government. After this period, criminal prosecutions were launched, new cases were opened, and, perhaps most sadly, prosecutions were even dropped. On the one hand, there is a plethora of things to investigate and probe, but on the other hand, there is a lack of incriminating material that has mysteriously disappeared. Concepts such as shredding or the loss of important documents were nothing new to the investigation team. For example, the prosecution in the case of the buying of MPs during the second Dzurinda government was stopped. Similarly, the prosecution in the case of vote buying during the vote on the health reform of Health Minister Rudolf Zajac was also stopped. At that time, Penta allegedly offered two million euros for one vote.
Former special prosecutor Dušan Kováčik also strongly supported the fight against the Gorilla investigation. For example, he prevented police officers from questioning former SIS agent Petr Holoubek and former SIS director Jan Valek. The obstruction gave time to cover the tracks of the Cypriot mailboxes through which Penta allegedly sent bribes to politicians. For example, Kovacik sent a request for cooperation to the Cypriot authorities a year after the investigation team asked for it.
In examining the Gorilla investigation, there are at least a few small positives. In 2013, politicians and oligarchs still refused to acknowledge even a small connection between the published documents and reality, even though it was confirmed that the Gorilla operation had taken place. Nowadays, a large part of the political spectrum is no longer afraid to accept Gorilla as a fact. Only the Penta group adamantly denies that it is a real dossier, a secret service action and wiretapping. For years, it has been suing journalists who write about the case or politicians and activists who speak about it.
Which names from Gorilla have paid for the dossier so far? The head of the National Property Fund, Anna Bubeníková, has been dismissed from her post. Milan Krajniak, a member of the fund’s presidium at the time, voluntarily left the post because, according to the file, he was supposed to vote according to Penta’s instructions. However, he later became Minister of Social Affairs for the Sme Rodina movement. Another scapegoat was the head of St. Michael’s Hospital, Stanislav Janota. The most powerful names were not affected. Jaroslav Haščák of Penta and others, however, did not sleep peacefully. The Gorilla recording was discovered during a search during the arrest of mafioso Marian Kočner.
Gorilla swept away Mikuláš Dzurinda and redrew the Slovak political map
Mikuláš Dzurinda suffered from the controversies of his coalition partners and was finally knocked out by the Gorilla file. In January 2006, the SDKÚ merged with the Democratic Party and the new political entity was named SDKÚ-DS. Mikuláš Dzurinda remained its chairman. After the 2006 early parliamentary elections, SDKÚ-DS won 18.35 percent of the vote and 31 seats in opposition to the election winner, Robert Fico, who exploited a split in the rival KDH and controversies in the Economy Ministry led by corruptly problematic figures Pavel Rusk and Jirko Malcharek.
However, it is necessary to add to the fall of Mikuláš Dzurinda the events of the next few years, because his party was de facto wiped off the political scene. In the next Slovak parliamentary elections on 12 June 2010, SDKÚ-DS won 15.42 percent of the vote and 28 seats. It formed a government together with SaS , KDH and the Most-Híd party. The official SDKÚ-DS candidate for the post of Prime Minister since 15 June 2010 was the election leader Iveta Radičová, who took the lead of the cabinet on 8 July 2010. The following day, on 9 July 2010, President Ivan Gašparovič appointed Dzurinda to the post of Foreign Minister, who remained as party chairman.
However, Iveta Radičová’s government soon fell. Members of the National Council did not approve the extension of the temporary euro fund, which was supposed to support the strength of the euro currency within the framework of European regulations, and thus did not give the cabinet a vote of confidence. To this day, the conflict between the otherwise allied liberals SaS and the conservative democrats SDKÚ is well known. SaS (later infantile, also thanks to Andrej Babiš’s former advisor Marek Prchal, renamed Saxony) rejected the euro-val even knowing that it would let Fico’s SMER take the helm. The SDKÚ paid for its pride and inability to reach an agreement.
Mikuláš Dzurinda announced on 12 March 2012, after a meeting of the party presidium, that he would not run for the post of SDKÚ-DS chair at the party congress. The reason was an unfavourable election result. He was temporarily replaced by Lucia Žitňanská, but without Dzurinda’s leadership, the party gradually lost its importance and remained low in voter preference polls for a long time.
Dzurinda, who is currently disqualified from public life mainly because of suspicious dealings by ministries led by his government colleagues, has made an indelible mark on Slovak history. In addition to defeating Vladimir Mečiar, a prime minister who criminalised the civil service, isolated Slovakia and had no problem threatening competitors with mafia aggression, Dzurinda managed to steer Slovakia to temporarily surpass the European Union average in many economic indicators.
This was the result of a series of reforms that were either his or his right-hand man Ivan Mikloš’s responsibility. The reduction of non-systemic social support, the introduction of activation work and the reform of the Labour Code, which among other things allowed for new forms of employment contracts – these are just a fraction of the extensive labour law reforms that have significantly changed Slovakia’s attractiveness.
The tax reform, consisting in the introduction of a single tax rate (the so-called flat tax of 19 percent), has brought about a significant simplification and transparency of the tax system. It has led to thousands of new jobs. The reform of the state-owned commercial banks, i.e. the General Credit Bank, the Slovak Savings Bank and the Investment Bank, has brought, in addition to state savings, solutions to criminal cases. Previously, these banks had often granted loans to members of the underworld, politicians and selected businessmen through bribed officials, with no follow-up on repayment and purpose.
The health care reform was the least popular among the people and it was not completed. The primary objective of the reform was to reduce hospital debt and improve the quality of services. In the end, it all stopped midway and Robert Fico’s government gradually downgraded the idea to the state after Mečiar’s last garrison. Thanks to this, the unsystematic health care financing formula, from which only private players benefit, has survived for decades.
Dzurinda and his nominees remain the only ones associated with the Gorilla file thanks to the good marketing work of Robert Fico and his Direction. In the days of Fico’s hegemony, it was no longer talked about who else was bragging about black money in the wiretap recordings.
