An important point in the history of the Slovak fight against organised crime was the establishment of the Special Prosecutor’s Office. The idea was conceived before 2004 mainly on the initiative of then Justice Minister Daniel Lipsic and other figures of Dzurinda’s SDKÚ. Because of the regional connections between politicians, police officers, prosecutors and crime figures, the aim was to establish an office that would not have these connections. Therefore, the highly autonomous mechanism of the Office of the Special Prosecutor’s Office was created, which solved the most serious criminal cases in the city of Pezinok in isolation, from mafia groups and murders to significant economic crime.
The Authority maintained its structure despite attacks from later governments and actually delivered results. Yet it was infiltrated by figures who, with political blessing, helped sweep up selected cases. Probably the most prominent figure of this type was the long-time head of the office, Dusan Kovácik.
Kováčik moved to the structure of the Special Prosecutor’s Office through the Military Prosecutor’s Office. After his appointment as head of the Office of the Special Prosecutor’s Office, there was no glitchy information, only his undisguisedly close relationship with representatives of Robert Fico’s Smer party, who repeatedly praised Kováčik’s qualities, was suspect. Not that this was illegal, but Fico’s praise of a legally independent official was not usual.
In 2012, the SME daily pointed out irregularities in the education of the St. Elizabeth University of Health and Social Work, where Kováčik received his PhD. Kováčik defended his doctorate in social work and taught criminal law at the school. He did not want to publish his doctoral research, and the school did not publish it either. In later years, it was revealed that the school had sold degrees to some well-known figures and was unable to produce the documents used to award the degrees.
During his tenure as head of the Special Prosecutor’s Office, Kováčik personally supervised more than 60 cases, but he did not file his first lawsuit until 2020. This is also why he was nicknamed 60:0, 61:0 or 62:0. No other of the 25 prosecutors working at the office had similarly passive statistics.
The more the passivity of the head of the Special Prosecutor’s Office became apparent, the more suspicions came to the fore as to whether the passivity was not systematic and whether it was not the role of Dusan Kováčik to simply sweep up cases. This impression was reinforced by the practices of Kováčik, who, by virtue of his authority, actively withdrew the files of subordinate prosecutors to himself. He intervened in selected cases or took them over directly.
One of them was the case of Ladislav Bašternák – a tax fraudster who was close to the top leaders of the Smer party and even did business with some of them. Kováčik also supervised the Gorilla case. He did not comment on the key he used to select the cases and why he never filed a lawsuit in any of them.
Despite his passivity, Kováčik was often praised and praised by Smer party representatives. The gratitude was also shown on his paycheck – as Transparency International published, Kováčik received his 13th and 14th salary for 2019, plus two extraordinary bonuses of €8,500. Thus, in total, he legally collected an annual salary of 104,795 euros, which was more than, for example, the prime minister took.
Unfortunately, this was not the only income of Dusan Kovácik. He also financed his luxurious life by taking bribes. As later investigations showed, he was taking information out of files for a fee, or he was deliberately sinking cases. By the time these lines were written, his cooperation with the Takács mafia clan had been proven in court. However, he is under suspicion in several active cases.
At the end of October 2020, he was arrested by the National Criminal Agency and charged with “the crime of accepting a bribe as well as the crime of establishing, conspiring and supporting a criminal group and the continuing crime of abuse of the power of a public official in conjunction with the offence of endangering a confidential fact and a restricted fact”. In 2022, the Supreme Court sentenced Kováčik to eight years in prison and a fine of €100,000. The accused was able to prove the acceptance of a €50,000 bribe for intervening on behalf of the Takács boss.
As already mentioned, Kováčik is suspected of having systematically handled similar contracts for the benefit of several business, political and organised crime figures. Fico’s fourth government in 2023 tried to help him by abolishing institutions, questioning witnesses and investigators, and amending the Criminal Code to make some acts statute-barred or subject to a lower sentence. Robert Fico attended Kovacs’ trials in court, where he loudly disrupted the proceedings and shouted that he was a political prisoner.
