Peter Kažimír in court. (source: SME - Marko Erd)
Welcome to your weekly commentary and overview of news from Slovakia. Slovakia’s central bank governor is found guilty of corruption, but remains in place. To Fico, he is a traitor – but Smer politicians still attacked the judge after the verdict. A work by Donatello is transported to an unknown location by the culture minister’s right-hand man, with no proper explanation.
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Kažimír is found guilty, coalition politicians turn on the judge
The governor of the National Bank of Slovakia (NBS), Peter Kažimír, is guilty of bribery. He is also the first ever former minister of the ruling Smer party to be convicted in a corruption case. Even though he and his former boss Robert Fico no longer see eye to eye, the prime minister and his Smer acolytes went out of their way to express outrage at the verdict – crossing lines that politicians should not cross.
The presiding judge at the Specialised Criminal Court, Milan Cisarik, was persuaded by the prosecution’s arguments when it alleged that, as finance minister, Kažimír paid a bribe of nearly €50,000 to the then head of the Financial Administration Frantisek Imrecze in order to expedite the tax appeal procedures of a company affiliated with influential businessman Ladislav Rehák. Imrecze has since been found guilty of corruption and is cooperating with the prosecution in several high-level corruption cases, including this one. We described the details of the case involving Kažimír and his trial a month ago, when it became clear that the judge was determined to return a verdict rather than rule that Kažimír’s case should be timed out thanks to revised statutes of limitations introduced by the new Criminal Code.
Kažimír, who is the country’s most well-paid public official – his salary of around €25,000 per month comfortably exceeds that of both the president and the prime minister – now faces a €200,000 fine or, if he fails to pay up, one year behind bars. The verdict of the first-instance court still can – and will, as Kažimír made clear – be appealed.
Pending the outcome of that appeal, the central bank governor remains in office. The problem with his being found guilty is thus, for now, as much reputational as practical – for Slovakia as well as for Kažimír himself. Given his role as head of the NBS, Slovakia is now represented on the governing council of the European Central Bank (ECB) by a convicted fraudster. He will only have to step down if he is found guilty on appeal.
Since the bribery case goes back to his time as a Smer minister, it also represents a reputational risk to the party of Robert Fico – something that the reactions of Fico and his fellow partymen made obvious.
