A NAKA officer pictured during a 2022 investigation into criminal allegations against Robert Kaliňák (Smer), who is now defence minister, and Smer leader Robert Fico, who is now prime minister. Both were charged with crimes, but the charges were later dropped. (source: Marko Erd)
A video featuring Martin Littera, the former director of wiretapping at the police inspectorate, reveals that surveillance of National Crime Agency (NAKA) investigators, including Ján Čurilla, may have been illegal, the Denník N reports. The revelation is incendiary as the wiretaps have been used extensively by the current prime minister, Robert Fico (Smer), to smear NAKA officers investigating alleged crimes committed by the Smer party's nominees during its previous periods in government. Fico has never explained where he got the tapes.
Suspicions arose about a year ago, and now the Denník N daily has obtained a recording that could serve as evidence. The recording reveals that the devices used to eavesdrop on Čurilla and his team between May and July 2021 did not belong to the Interior Minister's police inspectorate (also known as the 'police inspection'), as previously claimed.
The police inspection is a sort of internal affairs unit within the Interior Ministry that in theory should investigate wrongdoing within the police force, but which during 2020-23, when Smer was out of office, acted mainly to block probes into Smer-linked political corruption in what later became known as the 'war in the police'.
