An inherent and central part of Fico’s plan is the effort to control criminal proceedings. On the one hand, there was the pressure to remove the previous leadership of the police force and inconvenient investigators. On the other hand, something had to be done about the dozens of cases already in progress, many of which managed to get to court and in more than one case resulted in a conviction.
It is not surprising that the idea of a new general amnesty and pardon has arisen in the minds of criminal defense lawyers. However, given the still strong civil society in Slovakia and who was sitting in the Presidential Palace at the time of the government’s appointment, it was necessary to come up with something that would not formally look like an amnesty, but would nevertheless have the same effect. Many said that the government would wait until it had its candidate for the presidency and then anything would be possible. The catch was that the government needed to do it quickly. For some of the accused were about to be sentenced, while others were awaiting a new indictment.
Already on the recordings from the hunting lodge, which were made public after the police leak in 2021, a complex plan was emerging. Representatives of the Direction-SD leadership met there with defenders of many criminals, and later they merged together in the party’s structures and on the party’s candidate list. They discussed defence tactics for individual cases. Robert Kaliňák put forward the idea that as a new government they could prepare a completely new criminal code that would change so many criminal rates that the public would not be able to understand it. They simply wanted to unleash chaos in which it would be difficult for the ordinary citizen to discern that the primary aim of the legislation is, in fact, an amnesty for economic crimes. And indeed, after only a few weeks in office, the government has already begun to implement this plan.
There is nothing wrong in principle with the amendment to the Criminal Code and the Criminal Procedure Code. It was really outdated and the Matovič and Heger governments were already preparing to change it. In this process, however, it communicated with all the relevant players – representatives of the prison system, the bar association, the prosecutor’s office, the courts and so on. This is also why the draft amendment was slow in coming to fruition and failed to be passed by the end of the prematurely ended mandate in 2023. Only partial related parts of the reforms were passed.
The Fico government took advantage of this and apparently pulled out of a drawer an extensive amendment that had been prepared directly by the accused or their lawyers. The amendment to the Criminal Code and the Rules of Procedure regulates the financial thresholds for penalties in economic crimes, modifies criminal rates, investigation procedures and statutes of limitations. In order not to make it obvious that only economic cases are involved, it affects all types of crime, including violent crime. This book is too thin to list all the changes. However, the changes can best be illustrated through the specific impacts on the everyday lives of the population that full passage of the text of the amendment would bring.
For example, in the model example of housing fraud, where someone illegally repossessed someone else’s apartment, the perpetrator would probably get probation. In a robbery, where the offender steals property worth less than €31,000, he will walk away with a fine less than the value of what he stole and no prison sentence. He will receive a similar sentence to, say, a homeless man who stole some change from a grocery store.
The expert team of people from the judiciary and civil society listed forty similar examples of the toxic effects of the changes in the penal system made by the Direction-SD.
Under the rules in force until 2024, damage between €26,600 and €133,000 is to be considered as significant damage. Under the proposed change, anything with damage up to €35,000 is considered minor damage. Under the previous rules, the presumptive sentence would have been 3 years (with suspended sentence and probation supervision in case of mitigating circumstances), while the new offender would probably receive an alternative sentence (fine, forced labour or house arrest). Meanwhile, the limitation period is reduced from 20 years to 3 years by the proposal.
If, for example, a bank clerk embezzles a client’s money, she can increase her profit. Until 2024, embezzlement of €133,000 or more was considered major damage; now it would only be major damage up to €350,000. Instead of a particularly serious crime, it would be a misdemeanour and the penalty would now be 6 months to 3 years instead of 10 to 15 years.
Looking at the way the state is run and the nominations of the government for positions in the public service and everything that the state has a hand in, there is very good reason to be concerned about the impact of changes to the penal code and the rules on the management of public money. It is important to say here that a window of opportunity is opening for corrupt public officials – for example, in overpriced purchases. If he causes damage of up to 350,000 euros (almost nine million crowns), instead of ten years behind bars, as under the old conditions, he could face a maximum of six months to three years, but he could also pay for it with a fine, probation or house arrest.
Under the Fico governments, carousel fraud, i.e. fraud intended to claim unjustified VAT refunds, has become widespread in Slovakia. Simply put, the perpetrator also includes fictitious invoices in the tax return so that he can claim a refund of excessive VAT deductions. If he thus steals from the state up to a damage of EUR 350,000, he commits only a misdemeanour instead of the previously valid definition of a particularly serious crime. Again, he could face a maximum of three years in prison, with alternative sentences ranging from a fine to probation to house arrest.
In the case of a fraudulent transfer of an apartment, whereby the perpetrator has stolen an apartment worth up to 325,000 euros, he would face the same punishment – a fine of up to three years, instead of the current 10-15 years. Minor offences that are part of the practices of small-time mafiosi – fraudulent builders, puncturing tyres, setting fire to a garage, breaking windows and so on – would always involve small punishments in principle, namely the payment of a fine.
Organised crime will be pleased to see an adjustment of punishment for corrupt judges. If a judge accepts a bribe of up to €350,000 in relation to a case he or she is adjudicating, he or she will face a sentence of 2 to 8 years instead of the current 10-15 years. However, probation, forfeiture of property or house arrest would also be in play.
Internet scammers, who are a phenomenon of our times, can look forward to the fact that if they extort less than 35,000 euros from a victim, they will leave court with a misdemeanour with little damage, only probation and probation supervision, at worst, if they repeat the act, with a sentence of up to two years.
The part of the amendment that reduces the statute of limitations for embezzlement of a public official from 20 years to 3 years is very useful for the current government and their party nominees. If he steals less than €35,000, the police catch him and the court convicts him within 3 years of the act, the act will be classified as a misdemeanour. If more than that and he keeps it a secret, or obstructs the court sufficiently, after 3 years he faces nothing. Logically, the question has arisen whether this is not related to the fact that the Fico government is enforcing the regulation in the first weeks of its four-year mandate.
Indeed, punishment for bribing a witness to testify on behalf of the defendant can be useful. If he accepts 350,000 to 7 million euros, or roughly 8-175 million crowns, he faces a maximum of four years in prison; at the lower end of the bribe range, he can make it a misdemeanor with an alternative sentence of no jail time.
A separate chapter is the intervention in the rates relating to violent crimes. If, for example, a kidnapper demands a ransom of up to EUR 350 000 for a kidnapped person, including a minor child, he will face 10 to 15 years instead of 20 to 25 years in prison, and the act is to be statute-barred after 15 years instead of 30 years from the completion of the act. However, a similar reduction in the statute of limitations also applies to murder, robbery and assault.
We would need more space to list all the strange and even perverse changes that the new criminal law, prepared directly by the suspects, the accused and their lawyers, contains, but it is clear from these lines that Slovakia is becoming a dream country for organised crime and petty thieves. The voters who, despite massive media coverage and opposition and expert criticism, continue to support Fico and co. will unfortunately be left with nothing but eyes to cry on if they become victims.
The modifications we are describing are now facing resistance from the Constitutional Court, which has stopped part of the amendment and is assessing its constitutionality. This was a precedent when the court was considering legislation that was still invalid. The Fico government designed the law to apply retroactively. It would have taken only a minute of publication in the Collection of Laws for the defendants’ lawyers to challenge even final court decisions. It must be said that this is happening despite the verdict of the Constitutional Court. In fact, despite the Constitutional Court’s preliminary injunction, the amendment briefly appeared in the Collection of Laws, allegedly due to a technical oversight. And already there are cases of courts postponing hearings due to legal chaos. But you will know how it all turns out when you hold the History of Corruption in your hands.
Abolition of the Special Prosecutor’s Office and pressure on the courts
One of the main goals of Robert Fico and his entourage has been the abolition of the Special Prosecutor’s Office since the election campaign. They have attacked it with vulgar and fabricated narratives in hundreds of media appearances.
After a few weeks in office, their plan worked, and the institution with exemplary results, which among other things suppressed most of the gangs of the 1990s, ceased operations. Attorney General Maroš Žilinka promised that the prosecutors in the office would keep their files and cases even after they were transferred to the regional prosecutor’s offices. He has not kept that promise, and cases even at key stages are being studied by new prosecutors. Prosecutors from the Special Prosecutor’s Office have been reassigned to non-criminal departments on more than one occasion.
It is a sad fact that after bullying and obstruction, the prosecutors in the case of the murder of Jan Kuciak and Martina Kušnírová are also quitting. Thousands of pages of files will now be hastily studied by new prosecutors.
However, the Fico government is not stopping with the prosecutor’s office, it is also targeting special police units and even the courts. As we write these lines, government officials are publicly talking about the possible abolition of the National Crime Agency. And it is only a few days since the Ministry of Justice was asked by the Supreme and Special Courts to release data on the allocation of files to judicial panels over more than a decade. This includes the personal details of all parties involved. Moreover, Fico himself and other members of the government and their parties have repeatedly attacked specific judges of these courts, as well as constitutional judges.
There has also been a crackdown on the Judicial Council – a body that has specific powers and can punish specific judges – where the government intends to push through its nominees, including the old friend Štefan Harabin. In doing so, it has removed the members nominated by the previous parliamentary majority, and achieved the removal of the head of the council. It is also planning to nominate two constitutional judges of its own. Here too, controversial names are being bandied about and the government will be able to rely on the president from within its own ranks.
The government of Robert Fico’s government’s attack on the institution of cooperating defendants is also part of the control of criminal trials. In recent years, their testimony has formed the backbone of the charges against dozens of high-ranking people and criminals. The attack also includes the massive discouragement of witnesses and culprits in one person. The amendments to the Criminal Code and the Criminal Procedure Code open up the possibility for the Minister of Justice to retrospectively evaluate these statements and possibly cancel plea bargains. In this way, the government seeks revenge on those who spoke out about the system in exchange for lower sentences. Related to this is the desire to weaken or even abolish the Whistleblower Protection Authority. With the intention of protecting against bullying, police officers investigating profile cases in the past have also turned to it. They claim that the Police Inspectorate and the new leadership intend to systematically professionally shake them down and expel them from their ranks. The Fico government’s interior ministry responded by raising the issue of abolishing the institution, which was demanded of Slovakia by the European Union. Among other things, this would, of course, mean the loss of protection for whistleblowers among ordinary citizens. This would be more good news for corruption.
Demolition of institutions
The speed and vigour of the steamrolling that Fico unleashed in the autumn of 2023 took observers, even the more realistic ones, by surprise. In addition to the attack on the institutions of justice, the government has unleashed massive changes across institutions that it is either trying to control or render dysfunctional, even abolish.
The Ministry of Culture has drafted a law abolishing public television and radio, replacing them with a state-run media outlet where the dramaturgy and content will be decided by direct government nominees. The Fund for the Promotion of the Arts, which until now has distributed funds to support the creation of a wide range of arts, including literary works, is to be made dysfunctional by the draft law. Instead of more than a thousand evaluators, a dozen politically nominated representatives of the fund are to decide who gets support and who does not. At the time of writing, however, virtually the entire cultural community is in an uproar, and a more lenient norm is likely to be drafted.
The cabinet wants to eliminate any potential critics not only in the media and culture, but also in civil society. Government officials have halted several grant programmes and, at the time of writing, a law on “foreign agents” is being drafted to designate NGOs that accept funding from abroad as foreign-supported organisations.
In turn, efforts to limit the competence and effectiveness of the Public Procurement Office are intended to attack the transparency of public procurement. The Fico cabinet is also taking similar steps against the Antimonopoly Office. A similar intention is behind the restriction of the EIA process, where the government is severely limiting the public’s ability to find out information about upcoming projects and possibly object to them.
Not all institutions in the cabinet’s crosshairs will end, but they will certainly become fully controlled and dependent on the will of the government. The bodies that redistribute European subsidies are also on the lookout. The Agricultural Payments Agency, for example, has been recaptured extremely quickly. After only a few months, it is already in serious trouble, it is not redistributing payments as it should, and its European funding will certainly be under threat.
Ignoring European rules
Already after a few months of the government formed in 2023, official warning letters and infringements from Brussels began to arrive in Slovakia. After just a few months, funding of over a billion euros is already being blocked, and it is clear at the time of writing that much more is at risk.
Because of the threat to the rule of law, the suppression of civil society and the failure to comply with obligations related to the financial stability of the country, Slovakia is threatened with the freezing or withdrawal of billions of euros from the Recovery Plan, as well as from the classic EU funds. The damage has already been done – many projects will fail due to the non-repayment of EU funds, or will be paid for from the state budget, which the government is filling on debt, or by appropriating citizens’ money – for example, by reducing the contribution to the second pillar of social insurance and using these funds for state investments. Fico has been heard to say that the government should also look at citizens’ deposits in banks. According to him, they end up “in America”, but they should end up in Slovakia.
What is striking, even suspicious, is the passivity of the state, which knows about the impending financial consequences but fails to act. It seems to be preparing for the loss of European money, which makes up the majority of the state’s investments in Slovakia. The rhetorical justification for the withdrawal of funds is that it is a punishment for the cabinet’s different opinion on the war in Ukraine, the election of Peter Pellegrini as president, or Fico’s speaking out against the mysterious Western gender conspiracy.
One of the co-authors of the History of Corruption has been following European infringement processes and the use of EU subsidies in Slovakia for years. And already after a few months of Fico’s fourth government, he sees not only a multiplication of reprimands from European institutions, but also a new phenomenon – the state is not reacting. Even in Hungary, it did not work that warnings from Brussels were completely ignored. Viktor Orbán has tried to lie and pretend that he meets the conditions for reimbursement of European money. A European delegation came to Slovakia because of the attack on the rule of law, but no one from the government found time for it. In several cases, ministries are not responding to formal calls from Brussels. They have repeatedly ignored official demarches. Such behaviour has led to fines, suspension of payments and, ultimately, to legal action in the European Court.
This behaviour shows that for Robert Fico, drawing tens or hundreds of billions from the European Union is less important than maintaining his own self-rule. Indeed, the disbursement of European money is conditional on reforms or transparency. He cannot afford to do that in his efforts to preserve the system of corruption and his own freedom of action. What does it matter that the worst railways, roads, motorways or hospitals in the whole region will not be able to afford reconstruction. After all, it hasn’t changed anything about the electoral success of the Direction-SD policy for a decade. And that it would matter to any of this group of politicians? That can easily be judged by their performance.
