National Security Office (NBÚ) head František Blanárik made his first appearance on Wednesday, August 4, before the parliamentary special committee for oversight of the NBÚ, which issues national security clearances and protects state secrets. He briefed the committee on the activities of his agency in 2009, but MPs asked no questions about his widely publicised collaboration with the communist-era secret police (the ŠtB).
Blanárik, who was nominated by the Movement for a Democratic Slovakia, continues to deny reports published by the Sme daily from last year that he knowingly collaborated with the ŠtB until the fall of the regime in November 1989, informing on as many as ten people, including colleagues, in the process.
He has argued that he holds a valid security clearance. Committee chairman Marián Saloň, of opposition Smer party, said that he had not examined the controversial reports yet. In April 2009 the committee rejected a proposal to have Blanárik submit to new security clearance tests in light of the allegations. Blanárik was given security clearance before the reports on his ŠtB file were made public, the TASR newswire wrote. The then-committee chief Anton Korba (Slovak National Party) said that the file published in Sme didn’t prove that Blanárik was an ŠtB agent or that he had ever harmed anyone in the past.
Source: TASR
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
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