Fico’s attempts to outline a version of some kind of pressure from abroad were not unique. He started talking about Andrej Kiska’s meeting with George Soros and convened the state security council because, according to him, there was a threat of a coup. After a two-week defensive, the top leaders of the government – Interior Minister Robert Kaliňák and Prime Minister Robert Fico – finally resigned. This came as a surprise to many people. Because of their ability to withstand scandals, they were nicknamed the fireproof duo.
The two-time interior minister (and again defence minister in 2024) and the three-time prime minister (also in 2024) did not have secure positions not only in the case that showed the connection between the top police and the government office to the mafia. Around a dozen shaky cases shook their chairs during their careers. They’ve stood up to all of them.
For Kaliňák, this included the Kovošrot case right at the beginning of his ministerial career. Triangel Kapitál was the majority owner of the former state enterprise. The bankruptcy administrator announced a public tender, but cancelled the first round. This was despite the fact that one bidder offered CZK 51 million for Kovošrot. In the next round, Kovošrot was sold for CZK 25 million to Krupp, whose managing director and owner at the time was Kaliňák. Despite the legal vicissitudes, he then avoided charges.
The “Bejby” case was also well known, in which it was revealed that Kaliňák had been assigning a journalist from the daily Pravda, whom he called Bejby, topics to write about. In the “Hedviga” case, Kaliňák accused a Hungarian woman living in Slovakia who was attacked by neo-Nazis of perjury. The case was also handled by the Hungarian courts and Slovakia earned international shame for its actions. It also took the blame for a case in which a Slovak citizen was arrested in Ireland for smuggling a bomb. It turned out that this was a failed police exercise, and the citizen, who had had his fun behind bars abroad, had explosives placed in his backpack without his knowledge by a Slovak anti-terrorist unit.
There have been several similar cases. Most significantly, however, Kaliňák was threatened by the Bonaparte case, in which he was, and still is, suspected of having swept his business partner’s fraud under the rug. Protests in the streets, a storm of discontent from the opposition, media and NGOs, and pressure for the resignation of the interior minister came in the summer of 2016.
The kidnapping of a Vietnamese man
In 2017, the Vietnamese secret service committed the crime of kidnapping a citizen of the country, Trinh Xuan Thanh. He was a high-ranking state official of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, then a businessman who received a life sentence in Vietnam for alleged corruption. He therefore fled to Germany and applied for asylum.
Why are we writing about this in the History of Corruption? Thanh was ambushed by members of the Vietnamese secret service in Berlin, loaded into a car and dragged to the Vietnamese embassy. He was then taken to Bratislava, where he was included in a Vietnamese delegation that flew to Moscow on a Slovak government special. From there he then flew to Hanoi, where he is behind bars and where his life appears to be coming to an end.
Investigations by the authorities in Germany, as well as testimony from police officers and diplomats on the German and Slovak sides, suggested that former Interior Minister Robert Kaliňák knew about the whole operation and that he deliberately lied to the authorities about the composition of the crew of the government special. The condition of the beaten and drugged kidnapped passenger was brought to the attention of the Ministry of the Interior by the security staff and the airport.
However, top management should have ignored the warning, as well as the fact that the actual crew list did not match the reported one. Meanwhile, the Vietnamese secret service had planned the whole kidnapping to follow an unusual meeting between the Minister of the Interior and the Vietnamese delegation. It is also unusual for the Vietnamese to use a Slovak government special vehicle, which uses special security exemptions in international transport.
Slovak government officials saw the failure of the German side behind the kidnapping of Vietnamese businessman Trinh Xuan Thanh. The then Interior Minister Robert Kaliňák, his successor and other government politicians defended themselves by saying that it was a failure of the German secret service and police.
The practice, by which politicians wanted to absolve themselves of responsibility for helping the Communist country, among other things, by using false information about the flight of a government special to introduce an exile with the right to stay in Schengen abroad, has in some cases escalated into attacks. For example, in the programme O 5 minut 12 on the public broadcaster RTVS, the government MPs Ľuboš Blaha from the Smer-SD and Karel Farkasovský from the SNS very harshly called the German authorities guilty of the kidnapping. One of the co-authors of the History of Corruption was in contact with the German Embassy in Slovakia at the time. The latter was aware of the tactics of the people around Kaliňák, but they were convinced that international pressure would force the Slovak police to investigate the case. The German side also received a promise to do so from the then interim Prime Minister Peter Pellegrini. And it was taught what people familiar with Pellegrini’s actions had known for years – his word is worthless.
Both Směr-SD and SNS questioned the case in the following years until the public did not understand it and the police, although they investigated the case, ran into an obstacle in the form of Attorney General Maroš Žilinka, who swept the case under the rug. He stopped the investigation in the first days after he took office, but did not give any relevant reasons for this step. He also gave his only media interview on the topic up to the time of writing this article. It has been four years. The question is what motivated him to take such a quick, unique and significant step.
The German authorities, unlike the Slovak authorities, have solved the case and convicted the criminals they caught. They also confirmed the whole version that the kidnapping was organised with the help of the Slovak Ministry of the Interior. There was long talk in the backstage that Kaliňák had received two million euros for abusing Slovak state authority and for his complicity in the crime. For the sake of legal certainty, it should be added, given the state of Slovak justice, allegedly.
Bashternak
The root of the suspicion in the Bašternák case lies in complex tax fraud. However, the threat from a political point of view came from a simple statement of fact. Kaliňák, along with former Finance and Transport Minister Ján Počiatek, who is in business with Kaliňák, and Robert Fico, lived in the same building – the luxury Bonaparte residence owned by controversial businessman Ladislav Bašternák.
It is at this address that the story begins. The developer acquired the land at Hradni vršek in Bratislava back in 1997 for a surprisingly low price – CZK 14 million, which was well below the market average given the location. The Bonaparte complex construction project was accompanied by controversies from the very beginning. Inspections pointed to the lack of financial readiness of the developer, technical deficiencies and delays in construction. The construction process eventually dragged on for more than ten years. Even then, all was not well. In 2011, the developer spent months arguing with the building authority over the approval. The problem was the size of the project, which exceeded the approved permits. Eventually, however, Bonaparte got the green light.
Problems with the construction did not deter the exclusive clientele who then moved into Bonaparte. One name in particular dominated – Robert Fico. “I can only say that the apartment meets the basic condition that the prime minister had, namely a large representative hall – about 170 square metres – for receiving foreign political colleagues,” Ladislav Bašternák told pluska.sk. Since 2012, the prime minister has lived in a 377-square-metre suite with a 101.5-meter terrace overlooking Bratislava Castle, Slavín, Kamzík and Petržalka.
Slovak media pointed to unusually favourable lease agreements. Fico paid EUR 2,650 per month for the above-mentioned superior standard, excluding utilities. Bašternák also supplied the prime minister’s apartment with luxury furniture and expensive marble tiles. Bašternák himself has a five-storey villa just below Slavín, the most lucrative area for living in Slovakia.
Bonaparte is not the only project of the entrepreneur that has attracted a lot of attention. One could say it is a notorious developer of black buildings. He had problems in 2004, when he started to build a large-scale project in Tupého Street in Bratislava without a building permit. He did not even respect the city district’s calls to stop the construction. Until the sanctions came, the apartment complex was standing in the capital and Bašternák was selling apartments. Ex-defence minister and regional head of the Direction-SD Martin Glváč allegedly owns one of the flats at the address in question.
Businessman Bašternák is also known for his passion for luxury cars. This is evidenced by his fleet of cars, which is dominated by a limited version of the Bugatti Veyron. This is also linked to the 2012 excess. As pointed out by opposition MP and later head of the special prosecutor’s office Daniel Lipšic, Bašternák was arrested in Bratislava for speeding in a luxury Bugatti. While being fined, Bašternák allegedly made a phone call to an unknown number, after which the acting police officer was called by his superior and instructed to leave the detained vehicle alone. After the incident, the attribute “our man” remained.
The main controversy linking the leadership of the ruling Směr-SD party and Bašternák, however, concerns suspicions of tax fraud. A month after its establishment in 2012, the entrepreneur’s company BL – 202 claimed an excessive VAT deduction of almost two million euros against the state. The claim for the refund should have been made by buying seven apartments from Rent and Wash for almost 12 million euros. However, the Slovak “tax cobra” discovered that the prices of the apartments were overestimated and Bašternák’s company paid much less for them. In the same year, the company received almost six million euros in refunds. Once again, the mechanism resembled a carousel scam.
Despite warnings from the Financial Administration’s Criminal Office and the National Criminal Agency of the Slovak Republic, the company continued to operate. The audit of the Financial Administration did not find any wrongdoing, and the “tax cobra”, who initiated the audit, did not question the conclusion of the report. According to claims by opposition politicians, NGOs and some media outlets, the whole case could have been swept under the carpet by former Finance and Transport Minister Počiatek and long-time Interior Minister Kaliňák.
This caused a huge uproar in Slovakia and pressures for Kaliňák’s resignation. The situation escalated even further when Slovak police detained the assistant of opposition SaS MP Filip Rybanič. He was accused of endangering bank secrecy. As an employee of the bank, he was supposed to have viewed the accounts of Minister Kaliňák. According to his claims, he obtained a document confirming bank transfers from Bašternák’s companies to Kaliňák’s account. The Minister has not been able to refute these suspicions.
Companies linked to Fico and Kaliňák have earned billions of crowns under Robert Fico’s government. It is also known that Fico himself was aware of this and repeatedly attempted to “clean up” the situation by removing himself from top political positions. He has long since made it known that he will not be in politics in 2014. He tried to run for the presidency, and when he lost, he blackmailed President Andrej Kiska into nominating him to head the Constitutional Court. He threatened Kiska with tax fraud charges, which he later carried out. According to testimony at the meeting, where Peter Pellegrini was also sitting, he pulled a document with his tax data on the president. How he got hold of the tax secrets was never addressed by the police. Fico never found a warm spot, and Slovakia has entered the phase that crowns the events at the time of writing.
This was preceded by a brief phase when the health- and, according to testimony, alcohol-ravaged Fico handed over the premiership to Peter Pellegrini – a man who tried everything under Fico, from assistant deputy to deputy minister to minister of education, health, interior and informatisation. His predecessors in these positions usually had to resign because of various scandals. It was known that the public simply liked him and he was a good face to calm the situation. So was his presidency of the government, which he only led to the 2020 elections. The Direction-SD passed those, the party split and produced its twin Voice-SD. The bizarre, eccentric populist Igor Matovič came to power, inviting Boris Kollar’s strange party Sme Rodina and the parties SaS and Za ľudí, founded by ex-president Kiska, to join the government.
