The power of a small group of health care entrepreneurs in Slovakia has grown to obscure proportions. It was not only the previous penetration of financial groups, especially the Penta group, into health care facilities and the insurance system, but also the control of government decision-making at a completely micro-managerial level. Probably the best example was the control of the health sector by the Eastern Slovak family of Pavel Paska, for a time the chairman of parliament, but mainly the deputy chairman of the Směr-SD party. Ostensibly, he had nothing to do with direct control of the health sector, but in reality it was obvious that he had the whole department under his thumb. In addition to his positions on committees and oversight bodies, he, his relatives or associates had representation in everything of substance that determined anything in the health sector, from health care methodologies to the selection of suppliers to the method of public control. The well-known Košice mocipan, who had already built his empire in the eastern metropolis alongside Vladimír Mečiar, piled on suspicion after suspicion until public pressure finally brought him down and removed him from leading positions in the monochromatic Fico government.
The last straw was the Medical Group SK case. It was one of many companies that supplied various services and materials to the state. During the period of this chapter, it became famous for supplying CT machines to Slovak hospitals at gigantically overpriced prices. For example, the Alexander Winter Hospital in Piešt’any bought a CT machine from Medical Group for EUR 1.6 million, while the same type was bought by a Czech hospital for EUR 540 000. The scandal has sparked public pressure, demonstrations and a provocation of the Eastern Slovak medical octopus. It turned out that not only Paška and his family, but also other key representatives of the Direction-SD from the east, such as the long-time mayor and mayor of Košice Zdenko Trebuľa and Richard Raši (who was also the minister of health and in 2023 the minister of investment, regional development and informatisation of the Slovak Republic) were involved in the enterprises parasitic on the state.
Paška responded to the public pressure by resigning as President of the National Council of the Slovak Republic. However, it is known that he was pressured by other members of the Smer-SD leadership who did not like his excessive power and the fact that he was threatening the well-functioning one-colour corruption machine of Smer-SD.
Ministry of Komjatice
An obscure chapter in the history of corruption in Slovakia during this period was the personnel policy of Agriculture Minister Ľubomír Jahnátek, who also held the post of Minister of Economy in the previous Fico government. The minister’s nephew and niece were given senior positions in the Ministry of Agriculture, despite their unrelated professional experience. As a great local patriot, Jahnátek also employed dozens of people from his home village of Komjatice.
The man, who became head of the Office for the Regulation of Network Industries in the next Fico government after his ministerial post, was rather amusing in this episode, but it later came to light that he was one of the links to oligarchs and members of organized crime Miroslav and Norbert Bödör. Under the Fico government, the men controlled a large part of the state administration and especially the security forces.
Bonul
The Bödörs were also the family of Police President Tibor Gašpar. According to information from the investigation into the later murder of journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancée, Norbert Bödör was supposed to, among other things, arrange the technical and logistical surveillance of Kuciak.
The surveillance of uncomfortable journalists by top businessmen or former members of the secret services was discussed after media statements by the mafioso Marian Kočner, who had email and text message communications of some journalists.
Former police president Tibor Gašpar is the brother-in-law of Miroslav Bödör. They knew each other for years – since Gašpar’s time as an investigator in Nitra. Tibor Gašpar also did business with Miroslav’s son Norbert.
In May 2011, before he became police president in Slovakia, Gašpar founded GEANT. As also described by the murdered Ján Kuciak, he transferred the company to his wife, Iveta, before becoming police president. She transferred it to her son Petr in 2014. The company changed its name to WWA and in 2015 moved to a building in Nitra owned by Norbert Bödör. Moreover, the company’s management showed non-standard practices, such as multi-million advertising costs, even though practically no one knew about the company.
Gašpar was appointed police president in 2012 by the single-colour Směr-SD government of Robert Fico. And not only they, but also the Bödör family, began to thrive. The origins of the Bonul security agency, whose managing director and owner was Miroslav Bödör, date back to 1991. The company has been operating under its current name since 1998. Bödör’s daughter, Miriam Knoflíková, has been the managing director of the company since 2012; before joining Bonul, she worked in the same role at another security agency, BMN Security. This company was linked to Bonul and is suspected to have served as a competitor in several tenders in Slovakia in the past.
Bonul was originally a smaller security company with local operations mainly in the Nitra region. Unprecedented expansion came with the rise of the political party Směr-SD. It was only thanks to contacts with the ruling party that the company began to win lucrative state contracts.
It provided security services to the Slovak Post, the Social Insurance Company, the State Material Reserves Administration, the Water Management Company, the Slovak Electricity Transmission System, the National Highway Company, Transpetrol, Tipos and other major state companies.
As recently as 2009, the company’s annual sales amounted to EUR 19 million, with turnover multiplying in the following years. What is particularly striking is the rate of increase in business with the state. While in 2011, when Iveta Radičová ruled, the company earned state contracts worth 69 thousand euros, or about 1.9 million crowns, in 2012, when Robert Fico formed the government, Bonul’s state contracts were already worth 48.3 million euros, or about 1.3 billion crowns.
The key to success was supposed to be, among other things, Ľubomír Jahnátek, a close friend of the owner of Bonul. Jahnátek himself admitted that he used to go on the prowl with the company’s boss. The fact that Slovak Prime Minister Fico has repeatedly been a guest at Bonul’s company parties also testifies to his above-standard ties with politicians.
Social Democratic Erasmus
A separate chapter of clientelism is the infiltration of political and business cronies into higher education. Many politicians have reached their positions in the Czech Republic and Slovakia thanks to opportunistic skills that do not correlate with expertise. However, years later, the public also began to wonder about their professional background, and so the problem arose of how to present expertise to voters without proper education. Many politicians also had to meet new qualification requirements for the positions they held.
The practice of buying degrees at various artificial universities or schools that have been taken over by political circles has become widespread. A perfect example is the Slovak Danubius College in Sládkovičov. It is in the hands of the Azerbaijani presidential family, is run by people from the structures of the Smer-SD party and supplies degrees to lobbyists, mafiosi and politicians in several countries – particularly in the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
The filling of the rector’s position speaks for itself – the long-time leading representative of the Direction-SD, Mojmír Mamojka, was replaced by another member of the Direction-SD, Miroslav Daniš, who handed the position over to former SNS minister Peter Plavčan, who had left his position in the government shortly beforehand because of a massive corruption scandal.
The law faculty was the most eye-catching. She handed out degrees not only to members and allies of the Direction-SD itself, but also to partners on the other side of the Morava River – the ČSSD. Michal Hašek, Lukáš Vágner, Zdeněk Krutek, Roman Hanák and Zdeněk Dufek declared their higher education with diplomas from Sládkovičov. It is probably not surprising that politicians did not sit on many benches at the lectures in Sládkovičov or at the branches (such as the Joštova akademie) run by the school.
The owners of the private college are the Honorary Consul of Azerbaijan in Slovakia, Djalil Gasymov, his son Elcin Gasymov and Shamshir Shamshirli. Their business is closely linked to the Azerbaijani presidential family clan. Their names also feature in corruption investigations and international news reports.
