Enemy Deed of the Year announced

THE NON-GOVERNMENTAL Open Society Foundation presented the results of its INFOčin of the year contest on September 28, which monitors positive and negative examples of the implementation of the Freedom of Information law, the SITA newswire reported.

THE NON-GOVERNMENTAL Open Society Foundation presented the results of its INFOčin of the year contest on September 28, which monitors positive and negative examples of the implementation of the Freedom of Information law, the SITA newswire reported.

The foundation granted the Enemy Deed of the Year award to the Transport Ministry and National Highway Company (NDS) for their effort to conceal the highway toll collection contract from the press, the SITA newswire reported.

The company SkyToll established by the winning consortium SanToll – Ibertax succeeded in the tender to supply and operate the electronic toll collection system. The group SanToll-Ibertax, backed by French Sanef, with the highest of the four submitted bids, was the only company that remained in the competition after the NDS excluded the remaining three bidders it had originally shortlisted. SanToll bid €852.1 million. NDS did not make the contract public until pressured by the media and the opposition parties and only did so after getting approval from the winner of making its contents public.

The second prize concerns the long continuation of the case of audio recordings of the first session of Robert Fico cabinet from July 2006, for which three Cabinet Office employees were awarded a prize three years ago, as they did not want to make the recordings public. This year, the Bratislava Regional Court, which had dismissed the complaint against the Cabinet Office, won the prize.

Former Environment Minister, Viliam Turský, won third prize for his efforts to conceal from the press information on the price and amount of redundant CO2 emissions quotas sold by Slovakia.

The foundation awarded a Friendly Deed of the Year prize to the municipality of Žilina for a transparent and modern Internet website, also featuring an English version and a version for citizens with poor eyesight.


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