According to Prime Minister Robert Fico, it is quite likely that Slovakia‘s strongest opposition party, the Slovak Democratic and Christian Union (SDKÚ), is controlled by some fictictious, no-asset "mailbox" companies based in London, managed by directors sitting in tax havens and having accounts with banks in Switzerland or elsewhere abroad, the TASR newswire wrote.
Fico said at a news conference on Wednesday, January 27, that he makes such a claim based on new information concerning SDKÚ's financial background that keeps rising to the surface. Fico added that the money may have flowed from commissions paid for privatising Slovakia’s strategic property when SDKÚ was in power between 1998 and 2006. He claims that the owner of SDKÚ's logo is an English firm headquartered in the same location as Allied Wings, to which the party sent more than half a million euros in 2004. The financial transfer was allegedly made to pay off a loan previously taken to finance the party.
“We've come full circle ... massive laundering of dirty money to boot,” said Fico.
Following these statements by the Prime Minister, SDKÚ is planning to file a criminal complaint over what it called defamatory statements, such as the suggestion that the party had practiced "dirty money laundering", TASR was told by the SDKÚ press department later in the day. TASR
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
The Slovak Spectator cannot vouch for the accuracy of the information presented in its Flash News postings.
