From an anti-corruption point of view, there was a marked change in the approach to investigating high-ranking persons after the arrival of Igor Matovič and Eduard Heger. Political cover for high-ranking people in the police ended, so it was possible to develop some cases that civil society watchdogs had been pointing out for years, but the police, controlled by the oligarchy and organised crime, did not have the green light to prepare indictments.
Here are just a few of the cases that, after untying their hands, the police prepared for the indictment phase within a few months.
In 2020, when the Fico government was replaced, police arrested former Attorney General Dobroslav Trnka in connection with the crime of abuse of public office. The charges were brought because he failed to hand over a recording from the Gorilla case to law enforcement authorities.
God’s Mills and the Takács
Great turbulence was caused by the God’s Mills operation, in which high-ranking police officers Ľudovít Makó and František Böhm were first detained. They started to cooperate, which helped to indict special prosecutor Dusan Kovácik and police official Norbert Paksi. Böhm committed suicide, and the remaining group was prosecuted and charged for bribes, disclosure of sensitive information and abuse of power. Former special prosecutor Dusan Kovácik denied the charges and was vigorously defended by Robert Fico himself. However, the Supreme Court sentenced him to eight years in prison and a fine of €100,000 for accepting bribes to help the boss of the Takács mafia group. Paksi, who worked at the Special Police Activities Bureau, leaked information about the progress of the investigation to the mafia and was given five years along with a sentence of forfeiture of property.
The period covered in this chapter has also provided some evidence that organised crime in Slovakia in the 1990s is not just a thing of the past. Several high-profile cases, directly involving leading politicians and officials, have shown that old familiar domestic groups continue to operate in the country. Although their power has declined, they continue to reach into the highest structures of the state. One of the most visible examples is the Takács group, which has existed since the 1990s.
Founder Jan Takáč started with the Sýkorovci gang, but after disagreements he founded his own organized group. He paid with his life for the fights between the Bratislava mafias, and the Takáčs have since been allegedly led by Ľubomír Kudlička.
The group was involved, for example, in the takeover of a ski resort near Ružomberok, which was linked to the murder of rival Roman Krajčí, which put Kudlička behind bars. After 2015, police also cracked down on the southern branch of the gang. Since then, some 20 members of the Takács have been in court. But many have managed to defend or obstruct. The group remains active and is practically the only one that has operated as such since the 1990s. This is apparently due to its superior contacts with the police and political leaders.
Takács were known among businessmen on the edge of the law as the most effective solution for debt collection. They collected the ransom themselves, and as the investigation showed, not only in the 1990s, but also in the recent past. The group is also responsible for at least a dozen known cases of intimidation of businessmen. The Takács themselves were interested in their property or a planned project, or were hired by a competitor of the intimidated. Another large number of violent acts are attributed to the group in connection with intimidating witnesses who chose to testify in their cases in court.
Many of the gang members’ lawsuits have stalled and stalled in place due to the defense’s awareness. The group’s knowledge of classified portions of the file and witnesses, even the classified ones, made it very successful in influencing testimony and the presentation of facts as alternative interpretations of the testimony. Because of this, it was and is obvious that the Takács have information from inside the investigative bodies.
Among the suspicions proven is that the deputy director of the National Criminal Agency’s Operational Deployment Unit worked for the gang. For a flat monthly rate, he reported planned raids to members of the group. But the group’s best connection was the Attorney General. The highest ranking man in the Slovak prosecutor’s office accepted bribes for leaking information and interfering with investigations.
Purgatory
The extremely sensitive Purgatory case was triggered by the investigation into the relationship between the oligarch Norbert Bödör and the former police president Tibor Gaspar. Criminal investigators have formulated allegations that a criminal group headed by Bödör operated in the police force under the Fico government, investigating or sweeping cases under the carpet in exchange for bribes. The group of police officers was under orders to monitor political rivals of the Smer-SD. A group of these police officers, among other things, followed journalists in their spare time, including the murdered Ján Kuciak. Information about his movements, behaviour or relationships was thus passed on to the likely orderer of the murder. Police official Pavol Vorobjov confessed to lustration of Kuciak, among others. Other police officers admitted that they had made money by lustrating political opponents of the Smer-SD on the instructions of the Bödör family. However, many of them have not yet been brought to justice, they are in court waiting to see what their former employers, who have once again seized power in Slovakia, will come up with.
Judas
A group of police officers, including Police President Milan Lučanský, were arrested in 2020 as part of the Judas action. However, his actions were supposed to be linked, among other things, to his previous work in the police inspectorate. He committed suicide while in custody. The group of the accused also includes former member of the SIS leadership Boris Beňa, another member of the intelligence service Pavol Gašparovič, as well as a member of the leadership of the Financial Administration Daniel Čech or a high-ranking police officer Jozef Rehák and an elite investigator of the National Criminal Agency Marián Kučerka. All of them have been charged, and some have already been convicted, for sweeping and constructing cases to order or taking information from files. More than once, this information appeared at press conferences of the Smer-SD party.
Tollbooth
In the Mýtnik case, in addition to names from other cases, names from the Financial Administration appeared. Thanks to the agreements between the patron of Smer-SD and the oligarch Jozef Brhel, another big businessman Michal Suchoba and their political allies, the companies of these businessmen benefited from the digitalization of the financial administration, which was disadvantageous for the state. The accusations concerned Suchoba, Brhel, the head of the Financial Administration František Imrecze, State Secretary Radek Kuruc, oligarch Miroslav Výboh and ex-director of the Financial Administration Lenka Wittenberger. However, dozens of other officials and businessmen involved in the tunnelling of the Financial Administration have also been charged. Many of them have been convicted or have confessed.
The Pharisee
The action concerning corruption in the Slovak Information Service showed that even the change of political guards did not lead to a complete cleansing of the security structures. In the Farizej case, Vladimir Pčolinský, a nominee of the controversial parliamentary speaker Boris Kollar and his Sme Rodina party, who ran the intelligence service, was indicted. In the end, however, he was temporarily saved by the Attorney General through the legal peripeteia of Section 363, which we write about elsewhere (see 8.8). Since that time, however, the ruling Sme Rodina party of the Matović garrison has seconded the Direction-SD in questioning police investigations.
In addition to the agents themselves and members of the intelligence leadership, the case also involved businessman and member of organized crime Zoroslav Kollár, who, in collaboration with several members of the intelligence leadership, interfered with the secret service’s management instructions.
Weeds
The Plevel case concerned corruption at the infamous Žilina court. Although this is a seemingly regional problem, the court has dealt with several sensitive major cases involving organised crime, businessmen linked to it and the families of politicians. The mafia bribed a group of judges and lawyers to pervert the law.
During the Fico governments, the police system kept so much corrupt steam under wraps that it exploded after the political cover was blown. One police action after another poured out of this paper trail, and the new leadership, with their hands free and knowing they could pull dusty files out of the drawer, came up with arrests and indictments of public officials and covered businessmen every week. The system of corruption worked so well and for so long because its members were at almost every level of government, regulators, businesses or institutions.
Criminal investigators detained 18 people, including the director, at the hospital in Poprad. As part of the international Bossanova operation, they detained six men and one woman in connection with the crime of unauthorised handling of medicines, drugs and medical devices. They were also close figures supporting politicians. The police arrested 24 people in the Tiger operation. The crackdown was related to the crime of unauthorised handling of substances with anabolic or other hormonal effects committed by an organised group and the particularly serious crime of laundering the proceeds of crime. Charges were brought against 12 individuals and two commercial companies whose activities had long been overlooked.
Corruption was also uncovered at the construction office in Velké Meder, where five people were arrested. Corruption’s tentacles also reached into the Mochovce Nuclear Power Plant, where police arrested for a particularly serious crime of fraud related to the completion of Units 3 and 4 of the plant.
Cattleman and international disgrace
The Cattleman case concerned corruption and laundering of criminal proceeds from the Agricultural Payment Agency. It was one of the most significant economic criminal cases in terms of scope. The agency, which redistributed EU subsidies to farmers in Slovakia, had been so rotten for years that it had an unofficial but widely known price list of bribe rates for the agency’s staff and management, who distributed them according to organisational structure. The subsidised businessmen included well-known oligarchs, mafiosi and politicians. The evaluators allocated land subsidies to, for example, a concrete parking lot owned by a member of parliament from the ruling Direction-SD party.
However, the case has also hit powerful names from the oligarchy – the co-owner of the financial group Slavia Capital, Martin Kvietika (son of the famous actor Štefan Kvietika), and Norbert Bödör, whose family ran almost the entire Slovak police system for years and whose Bonul is featured in several places in the History of Corruption. The politically nominated heads of the agency also ended up behind bars.
The case was a disgrace internationally. The European Commission reacted to the discovery that a large part of the money sent to the agricultural agency had been stolen by demanding an urgent restructuring of the agency. However, political and criminal silos blocked these changes for so long that for the first time in history the EU considered giving another member state – Austria – the competence to distribute Slovak agricultural subsidies. Matovic’s, Heger’s and Odor’s short-lived bureaucratic governments eventually reformed the agency. But it continues to struggle, its other managers have ended up in handcuffs and its future is unclear at the time of writing.
The Storm
The Tower operation exposed the cocaine trade and the fact that it was covered up by members of the Bratislava I District Court management. Equally significant was the Storm action, which caught corrupt judges. The police arrested 18 people, including 13 judges. They were accused of corruption, interfering with the independence of the court and obstruction of justice. Many of the judges were convicted, among other things, by obtaining Marian Kocner’s communications on the Threema app.
Particularly at the time of the covida pandemic, the action of the Reserve, which involved tunnelling of the State Material Reserves Administration (SSHR) of the Slovak Republic, was also perceived with sensitivity. The police accused the head of the administration, Kajetán Kičura, of accepting bribes and laundering the proceeds of crime. While the authority lacked sufficient equipment for pandemic activities and the warehouses were empty, during the raid on Kičura, who boasted of his friendship with Robert Fico, detectives found undocumented gold bars and large amounts of cash.
Raids and arrests did not avoid the Slovak Ice Hockey Association, where the manipulation of public contracts was involved. There have been numerous raids on organised drug gangs, which have long been overlooked. Justice was also served on the special prosecutor Dusan Kovácik, whose fate is described in a separate subsection (see 4.7). During the Vihřice operation, the police arrested a mafioso and feared bankruptcy profiteer, Zoroslav Kollár, former deputy chairman of the Slovak Supreme Court and deputy chairman of the Bratislava III District Court.
Suicide of the police president
As we mentioned above, Police President Milan Lučanský also ended up in handcuffs, replacing Tibor Gašpar. Thanks to his charisma and media notoriety, he enjoyed great popularity. In the past, however, there was already controversy about the fact that he helped some members of the mafia from the 1990s to evade justice. This is a controversial topic because he was also instrumental in cracking down on other gangs. He also served for a long time on the board of the police inspectorate. After being placed in custody, the whole situation affected him so much that he took his own life. This tragedy has since been exploited by the politicians of the Direction-SD and their partners who conspire that Lučanský was murdered. They have also convinced a large part of the population. Meanwhile, the case was investigated by independent commissions, inspectorates, the police, the prison service and the Prosecutor General’s Office – all of which confirmed the suicide of the former police president.
Several mayors from municipalities in the Bratislava region also went behind bars. The Consultant action was about machinations in public auctions and public procurement and damage to EU financial interests. A man from the mafia background nicknamed Little Fero – František Salinger – confessed and described the bribery system in the courts. He was given a two-year suspended sentence suspended for three years. Thanks to his testimony, other judges were caught. These were mainly judges from Žilina, some of whom confessed. Also charged in connection with the case is the legendary and controversial former head of the Slovak National Party, Ján Slota, who was alleged to have bribed a Zilina judge to make a decision.
Another big fish who ended up in jail is Monika Jankovská – a former judge, MP from the Direction-SD and deputy justice minister, whom Fico promoted as a minister for a while. The charges relate to influencing court decisions and other judges, taking bribes, bribery and the Fatima case, where she helped decide a dispute over a discobar in favour of the mafia and where there was a fabricated persecution of the opposing party.
About forty high-ranking individuals were also found guilty in court during the period of the Matović and Heger governments. In addition to investigations into the cases of high-ranking political appointees, several striking facts about the functioning of the criminal authorities and the judiciary itself have also come to light. As has been shown, a group of judges deciding sensitive cases have been corrupted and “fed” for years.
Organized crime and oligarchs chose the leadership of the various police agencies and the mafia paid them a special bonus from their own pockets on top of their official salaries. Organized crime practically controlled and used one entire unit of the National Criminal Agency. A similar mechanism operated in the Criminal Bureau of the Tax Administration. Its management, on assignment, created fabricated cases against political leaders of the opposition or selected businessmen. On their own, these investigators created separate cases and blackmailed various businessmen. The military intelligence and the Slovak Information Service were also under the influence of these groups of oligarchs, politicians and the mafia. Massive arrests were also made there, for example, in the case of the information service, both the current and the previous director were arrested and charged; it must be said that in one case it was already a nominee of the Matović government.
The fact that the police were investigating several cases involving Matović’s government nominees also suggested that the impartial police had been truly emancipated and liberated. Nevertheless, Fico, Směr-SD, Hlas-SD, SNS, the extreme right and others worked carefully to build the narrative that this was only a politically ordered police activity. This was also helped by the inept and unprofessional communication of the government representatives and especially Igor Matovic. In his own style, he boasted about who had been arrested and made it sound as if it was to his credit. In reality, however, the government under his leadership, apart from removing political pressure in the police, did not address many of the problems that threatened the long-term impartiality of the police authorities.
Representatives of the Směr-SD party in particular have embarked on a massive official and unofficial disinformation campaign to defend the convicted and accused. They prepared daily press conferences questioning the investigators, judges and entire institutions. They personally defended, sometimes as part of legal teams, mafiosi like Marian Kočner or corrupt appointees like Dušan Kováčik.
They had everything carefully strategized and, in addition to a large-scale campaign directed at the public, they ran conspiracy games inside the investigative bodies themselves. It was the above-mentioned incompetence and laxity of Matović’s government that preserved the staffing of several key police bodies, where people remained committed to the system created by Smer-SD and the mafia.
