Tibor Gašpar and Denisa Saková at archive photo from May 2018 (source: Jozef Jakubčo, Sme)
The former police corps president will no longer serve as adviser of the Interior Minister, Denisa Saková.
“We will lower media pressure on him with this step,” Saková told the press before her meeting with President Andrej Kiska. Kiska had invited her to the Presidential Palace to speak with her about the security situation.
Kiska insinuated the information Aktuality.sk website reported one week ago.
Aktuality.sk, a news website the murdered Ján Kuciak worked for, wrote that the chair of the Intelligence Unit of the Financial Police, Pavol Vorobjov, screened Ján Kuciak's police files in the autumn of 2017. This was a few months before Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kušnírová were murdered.
Gašpar, who is also Vorobjov’s neighbour, issued the order to screen Kuciak, Vorobjov claimed. Gašpar has denied this.
Following the murders in February 2018, Gašpar’s dismissal was one of the demands of the “For a Decent Slovakia” protests.
He first refused to step down. The Interior Minister at the time, Tomáš Drucker (a Smer nominee, who later resigned) did not sack him either. But following Drucker’s resignation, PM Peter Pellegrini (also of Smer) acted as interim interior minister and announced that Gašpar would leave his post in late May.
In August, the public learned that Gašpar acquired a job at the Interior Ministry as the minister’s adviser. Gašpar is related to oligarch Miroslav Bödör through their wives, the Sme daily reported.
Bödör’s name also appears in connection with spying on journalists. The spying was reportedly conducted by Peter Tóth, former SIS intelligence service member, on the order of Marian Kočner. It was Norbert Bödör, son of Miroslav Bödör, who reportedly informed Kočner about the place of residence of the people they spied on, as well as their cars and registration numbers, Sme wrote.
