Mikuláš Černák is one of the most famous figures of Czech and Slovak organised crime in the 1990s. A trained car mechanic, he was involved in robberies and violent crimes before his “famous” career. However, thanks to his cooperation with the secret services and businessmen who committed economic crimes, the small-town mafioso grew into a heavyweight.
He used to appear at the celebrations of regional HZDS politicians. Thanks to this, he got away with numerous tax frauds. Černák became a memento and a synonym for the brutality of the 1990s. He was personally involved in dozens of murders. He often boasted that he liked to send his victims to the afterlife with his own hands, even when he did not have to.
However, it was this that cost him his freedom at the end of Mečiar’s hegemony. Most of the dozens of victims were known to have been buried in the mountains around Brezno and Banská Bystrica. He also carried out some of the executions in the local countryside. He usually made sure that he had accomplices – he forced potential witnesses to contribute to the murder of the victim; he believed that this would guarantee the participants’ secrecy. However, due to the number of murders, over time some bodies were discovered, and the police, under public pressure, also began to cut their teeth on Černák. However, this only happened under the pressure of the changing political situation and also because of the bluntness of Černák, who liked to show his face in the media, thus drawing attention to himself and also to his relations with politicians. Černák was arrested in Prague in 2003. Only a fraction of the murders were proven, but even these were sufficient to give him the maximum sentence – life imprisonment. However, some of Černák’s cronies did not end up behind bars, and some of the alleged members of the leadership continue to do business in Slovakia as legitimate entrepreneurs.
