The judge of the Bratislava I District Court, Stanislav Dutko, will have his salary reduced by half for one year for a mistake that allowed alleged mafia boss Karol Mello to be released and flee the country, the TASR newswire reported on December 14.
The appeal senate modified the original first-level decision made in November 2011, according to which the judge should have had half of his salary docked for only six months. The disciplinary proposal was filed by former justice minister Lucia Žitňanská in June 2011. She wanted to see the judge punished by a 70-percent reduction in his salary for one year or suspended from his duties, TASR wrote.
Mello is an alleged mafia boss accused of a double murder in the village of Most pri Bratislave in 2004. After successfully hiding for years, Polish special police forces arrested Mello in October 2010 but he was released by Slovak courts shortly after he was arrested in May 2011, reportedly due to procedural errors by a court. After being detained again he filed a complaint and was again released from pre-trial custody for the second time later in the same month.
Currently Mello lives in Belize where he was arrested on August 10, 2012 after the court abolished the extradition order issued on July 16. He was accused of perjury and immigration related offences based on allegations that on September 17, 2011 he wilfully falsified the expiration date of his Slovak passport. Yet, the courts cleared him of all the charges on August 20.
Source: TASR
Compiled by Radka Minarechová from press reports
The Slovak Spectator cannot vouch for the accuracy of the information presented in its Flash News postings.
