Viliam Soboňa tried to present himself as one of those members of the HZDS movement who are more sophisticated and have nothing to do with “rough and tumble” practices. The native of Bardoňov, near Nové Zámky, after studying at the Faculty of Medicine of Comenius University in Bratislava, worked as a doctor in the internal medicine department of the hospital in Nové Zámky. Soboňa thus tried to present the professional face of the HZDS. He was a member of the Federal Assembly for HZDS and after the establishment of independent Slovakia in 1993 he became Minister of Health. In 1995 he moved to Sliač, where he became the director of the Sliač Spa. “Became” is, however, a rather vague term. It turned out that his plan was to acquire the property in a Mečiar-style manner.
Although for a while it looked like he would stay away from the crimes of the Mečiar regime, in the end his person proved to be a classic member of the systemic corruption chain. Not only as an MP, but also, for example, as the head of the SIS control committee, an extremely sensitive position for Vladimir Mečiar.
The flavor of his core business was similarly bitter. From Mečiar’s commission, he obtained a supermajority stake in the privatisation of Spa Sliač under conditions unfavourable to the state and without meeting the basic rules of privatisation, such as the repayment of basic capital requirements. At the time, he was both Minister of Health and Director of the spa.
However, his business story did not end with the strange privatisation. He had the misfortune of having the Dzurinda government come to power, which tried to intervene in the most blatant privatisation scams, including Soboń’s. Another problem for the efforts to get rid of the sword-wielding privatiser was that he was re-elected as a member of parliament in 2002, and was even appointed head of the committee for controlling the secret service. After a while, he even tried unsuccessfully to win the seat of Banská Bystrica mayor.
There were also long-standing suspicions that he was influencing the composition of the judicial panels that decided on the ownership of the spa. However, in the end, the Supreme Court ruled that he had no claim to the spa. In addition to the money he managed to gain from controlling the Sliač Spa, he currently owns a consulting firm. His son is also involved in the business.
