Václav Havel’s 1990 amnesty brought a diverse mix of Czech and Slovak citizens to freedom. In addition to those who were punished by the former regime in overcrowded prisons in retaliation or for petty crimes, several dangerous individuals who understood the situation as a new start in their criminal careers were also released. This was also true of Tibor Pápaja, who in a short period of time rose to become the head of the mafia in southern Slovakia.
His gang, nicknamed the Papayos, exploited the specifics of the region. The agrarian and Hungarian-speaking part of the country already had strong links with neighbouring Hungary and a kind of unwritten autonomy under communism. The local population was already known for its unofficial business activities under communism, especially in the gastronomy and agriculture sectors. It was on this that the rapidly emerging businesses of the 1990s built their future. And it was this environment that was exploited by local organised crime, which the mafia of the rest of Slovakia had long respected and had not interfered with. In addition to traditional racketeering and violent crime, local gangs were also involved in smuggling and economic crime.
During the Mečiar era, Pápay also used good contacts with the Slovak Information Service. The latter was involved in forming an alliance with the Bratislava mafia known as the Sýkorovs and Mikuláš Černák. His hegemony was only stopped by a brutal murder, when Pápay and nine members of his group were executed with automatic weapons at a party on 25 March 1999 in the Danube-Strada restaurant Fontána. The mass murder was the result of the ensuing struggle. The new leadership of the South Slovak mafia was also active in other stages of the republic’s development, and their criminal acts are still encountered by police and investigative journalists today.
