Slovakia loses fight against corruption

Prime Minister Robert Fico has presided over the systematic tearing down of Slovakia’s ability to tackle corruption — and his political rivals are furious.

The government in Bratislava took several steps during the summer to further dismantle corruption-fighting institutions, triggering outrage from senior opposition figures, graft-busters and the Slovak public.

Those steps featured remaking the public broadcaster into a state-run TV channel and a war on culture, including the political firing of two popular arts directors, which sparked massive protests.

But it’s the disputed overhaul of the criminal code that so far has had the most visible consequences, with convicted criminals being let out of prison. Fico — who survived an assassination attempt in May — is seen by the opposition as having orchestrated the revamp in order to help out political cronies who faced prosecution or jail terms.

The amendment to the criminal code, introduced in February but which only entered force in August, reduced penalties for a broad spectrum of crimes, such as corruption and fraud.

It also led to the abolition of the special prosecutor’s office, the institution that handled sensitive corruption cases, including those connected to officials from Fico’s populist ruling Smer (Direction) party.

“The Slovak government has not only given up the fight against corruption, but is directly creating ideal conditions for it,” Ľudovít Ódor, a former prime minister and newly elected member of the European Parliament for the opposition party Progressive Slovakia, told POLITICO. “By reducing penalties, intimidating and sanctioning brave investigators and disbanding the police force.”

Slovakia’s Constitutional Court later suspended some of the changes, like the slashing of the statute of limitations for rape, but did not overturn the decision to abolish the prosecutor’s office.

The government was forced to hastily tweak the amendment in July after the European Commission published its Rule of Law report and pointed out that Slovakia could lose access to EU funding over some elements of the changes, which risk diminishing the country’s ability to pursue high-level corruption cases and protect the EU’s financial interests.

Erik Kaliňák, a newly elected MEP for Smer, told POLITICO that “the reforms have been carried out in a way that does not contradict EU law or international legal standards” and that he is “convinced these reforms have been accepted by the European Commission … and are no longer perceived as a problem for the drawdown of the EU funds or the recovery plan.”

The European Commission told POLITICO it was in close dialogue with Slovak authorities and has made its concerns about the changes to the criminal code “very clear.” The European Public Prosecutor’s Office and the European Parliament have expressed discontent as well.

None of the backlash, however, has discouraged Fico and Co.

Police reshuffle

On Aug. 30, Slovakia’s government disbanded the national crime agency (NAKA), a police force at the forefront of investigating crimes like corruption or terrorism, replacing it with three separate organizations. The abolished special prosecutor’s office previously oversaw NAKA’s investigations.

NAKA had throughout the years investigated some of the most prominent cases of organized crime and corruption under previous Smer-led governments, including the case which murdered investigative journalist Ján Kuciak worked on.

“NAKA is coming to an end — and with it its abuse by the politicians. Since 2020, NAKA has served primarily as a tool of political revenge,” Interior Minister Matúš Šutaj Eštok said on Facebook, pointing the finger of blame at a former prosecutor general and three ex-prime ministers.

At the end of July, prosecutor Michal Šúrek and the former head of NAKA, Ľubomír Daňko, were charged by the country’s police internal affairs department along with two former police investigators with abuse of power.

All had previously worked on a corruption case codenamed “Purgatory,” in which Fico, Defense Minister Robert Kaliňák, former national police chief Tibor Gašpar and other high-ranking officials were suspected of corruption and manipulating police investigations.

Graft-buster Daňko, who now works for NGO Zastavme korupciu (Stop the Corruption), told POLITICO that the accusations against him were totally baseless.

“The accusations are completely made up and absurd. I deny that my colleagues or I would commit any crimes. I think they just needed to remove one prosecutor from one of the big cases, and they couldn’t charge just him alone, because that would be too obvious,” he said.

The 23 investigators from NAKA who defended their accused colleagues were reassigned to different police departments.

Long live the criminals

Grim statistics from Transparency International Slovakia reveal that up to 88 percent of the public believe Slovak courts to be corrupt; and only 33 percent of people trust the justice system.

One of those freed from prison under the new law is Dušan Kováčik, the former top special prosecutor and Fico ally, whose sentence was suspended by Justice Minister Boris Susko several weeks ago, leading to protests calling for the minister’s resignation.

The Specialized Criminal Court has recently confirmed Kováčik’s guilt in accepting a €50,000 bribe from the mafia to drop an investigation into various cases. The verdict is not final, and Kováčik has appealed to the Supreme Court.

“It worries me that a politician interferes with the judicial branch of power in such an important and politically exposed case,” said political scientist Radoslav Štefančík from the University of Economics in Bratislava.

Fico, for his part, in August said that the Kováčik case was “a textbook example of a manipulated … trial.”

Peter Košč, a businessman who was the subject of an international arrest warrant as part of a wider corruption probe into Kováčik, has also announced he is returning to Slovakia. He can do so following years on the run after the court put a stop to his criminal prosecution after the amendment came into force shortening the statute of limitations for various crimes.

Kaliňák, the Smer MEP, told POLITICO that Susko’s decision to suspend Kováčik’s sentence is “fully in accordance with the law.”

Slovakia’s justice and interior ministries did not respond to a request for comment. The prime minister’s office and a Smer spokesperson also did not respond to a request for comment.

Ódor, the former prime minister, said the EU knew “very well” what is happening in Slovakia, and it is only a matter of time before it will have to react.

“I regret that when that happens, Fico and his cronies will not be affected by the EU sanctions,” he said. “They enacted lifetime annuities recently and will enjoy bountiful pensions. In turn, Slovaks without European subsidies will pay for it with a worse quality of life.”