The author of a report concerning alleged fraud at the Military Intelligence Service (VSS) during the first government of Robert Fico is allegedly a retired colonel and the former deputy head of the VSS in 2011 and 2012, Vladimír Suchodolinský. On Tuesday, May 21, he addressed the media and admitted he had written the report, adding that he also wanted to discuss events at the VSS with the parliament’s Special Control Committee to investigate the activities of the merged Military Intelligence, but that so far he has not had the chance.
“I am ready to face the committee to authenticate the report that the committee has at its disposal, and I also ask the Defence Minister [Martin Glváč] to release me from the oath of secrecy, so that I can speak,” Suchodolinský told the TASR newswire. He also confirmed that after the original report detailing alleged mismanagement at the VSS was shredded, he offered to recreate it for then VSS head Róbert Tibenský, in September 2012, but never received a response.
The Defence Ministry meanwhile found another witness who was hired during the tenure of former minister Ľubomír Galko (nominee of Freedom and Solidarity [SaS]), who made legal notes in the original report, Glváč said after the Tuesday session of the Special Committee. However, he quoted the witness as saying that the published document is not the same as the report that was shredded.
Glváč also promised, according to SITA, to lift the oath of secrecy from the report’s alleged author as soon he is asked to do so by the Special Prosecutor’s Office. He added that it would be illegal to remove the oath of secrecy at the behest of the head of the parliamentary committee, Martin Fedor (Slovak democratic and Christian Union [SDKÚ]). Glváč read for the media a legal opinion, according to which the committee, headed by Fedor, has no right to ask the minister to hand over documents concerning completed or ongoing cases for the purposes of studying them, making notes or publishing details taken from such files.
The Sme daily published allegations of tunnelling at the erstwhile Military Intelligence Service (VSS) and Military Defence Intelligence (VOS). Sme published on May 16 details from a 134-page report which alleges large-scale embezzlement of public funds by employees at the former VSS during the first government of Robert Fico (2006-2010). The daily says it received the document anonymously, and that it is probably based on an internal investigation of the VSS that began under former defence minister Ľubomír Galko.
(Source: TASR, Sme)
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
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