Certain documents regarding the sale of the Slovakia's emission quotas to the Interblue Group company have either been removed by people involved in the shady transaction or somehow destroyed during the personnel changes at the Environment Ministry, Deputy Prime Minister Dušan Čaplovič told the TASR newswire.
Čaplovič, who temporarily took over the ministry in the wake of the scandal, said that among the documents that are missing is proof of wrongdoing. “The people involved have realised all too well in advance that a number of serious mistakes were made,” he said.
The Deputy Premier found out that the relevant documents were missing when working out the first report to be submitted to Parliament. The documentation Čaplovič asked for and received lacked critical pieces of the puzzle. “I've been told that there are only a small number of documents involved, with the most crucial ones nowhere to be found,” said Čaplovič.
Much to his surprise, however, an entire folder of new documents resurfaced after his successor Jozef Medveď took over the ministry. “Still, they didn't contain all of the data,” he said.
Čaplovič further said that it's not only documents regarding the sale of emission quotas in 2009 that are missing, but also those covering the sale under the tenure of minister László Miklos (Miklos was a member of Mikuláš Dzurinda's government before 2006).
Slovakia sold 15 million tonnes of emission quotas to the Interblue Group for €75 million, at a rate of €5.05 per tonne. According to the opposition, media and the current ministry management, this sum was disadvantageous. An extra euro per tonne should have been paid by the company for green projects. Interblue manager Jana Luetken said last December 2 that the projects aren't well defined and that the company will not pay the remaining €15 million. TASR
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
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