Eastern Slovakia was phenomenal in the period associated with Vladimir Mečiar, especially in terms of the concentration of the mafia in large industrial enterprises. Organised crime there was not only known for the numerous clashes between individual gangs, but also for its direct links with influential figures of Mečiar’s HZDS. It was also thanks to this that members of the group found themselves directly in the structures of the tunnelled Východoslovenské železárny, which was privatised mainly by the controversial Rezes family. Organised crime used fictitious invoices for goods or the activities of freight forwarding and security subcontractors to get money out of the factory.
Róbert Holub, the head of the Eastern Slovak Mafia, organized the criminal structure and business activities mainly through the private security agency Secura. The agency, like other Slovak criminal groups, cooperated with the deputy of the Slovak Information Service Jaroslav Svěchota. However, the group’s good times ended after it staked its claim in the lucrative privatisation of the Prešov meat processing plant. This was of interest to figures even closer to Mečiar’s structures, and so the Slovak Information Service, through its deputy, ordered the murder of the Košice boss Holub to the Banská Bystrica boss Mikulas Černák.
The liquidation of the Holub boss is also one of the spectacular actions that the Slovak Dark Ages brought. After the failed assassinations in Košice, Holub was lured to a meeting in Bratislava. Together with Černák and the Bratislava bosses, he was there to negotiate a settlement of strained relations. The security guarantee was to be provided directly by the secret service. In reality, it was an ambush. A masked assassin, Jozef Roháč (behind dozens of murders, including the explosives in Róbert Remiáš’s car), entered the bar in Bratislava’s Amadeus Hotel, killing Holub’s crony Štefan Fabián on the spot with a gunshot and seriously wounding Holub.
He was taken to a hospital in Bratislava’s Kramároch district, where the execution had a disgusting end. Despite proclaimed police protection, a finale was allegedly staged with hospital staff watching – on the night of October 4 to 5, Roháč climbed onto the roof of an adjacent building on the hospital grounds and fired 24 shots from an automatic weapon into the windows of one of Slovakia’s busiest hospitals, four of which ended up in the head of Holub, who was fighting for his life. The ambush, coupled with the betrayal of state authorities, led to a series of retaliatory attacks, and residents of Košice and nearby destinations read daily in the press about new and fresh shootings and explosions.
The massive explosion in front of the railway station in Košice in broad daylight, at a time when hundreds of people were there, is very illustrative of the atmosphere in eastern Slovakia at the time. The blast destroyed cars in the car park and blew out glass panes not only at the station but also buildings in the wider area. Miraculously, the bombing around 5pm injured ‘only’ four people, one of them seriously. The target of the attack, Dusan Borzensky, who was to become Holub’s successor, survived the attack (he was later apprehended on the run in Prague, where he had asylum with the local mafia).
