A libel case brought by former Trnava archbishop Ján Sokol against the weekly news magazine Týžden continued at the district court in Trnava on June 22. Three witnesses testified during the day’s proceedings, of whom the first was Archbishop of Bratislava Stanislav Zvolenský, the SITA newswire reported.
The testimony partly concerned an alleged transfer of Sk500 million in five instalments to an account held by one Štefan Náhlik, at a time when Archbishop Zvolenský served as vicar of the metropolitan tribunal of the Bratislava-Trnava Archdiocese. During the communist regime in Czechoslovakia, Štefan Náhlik was an agent of the ŠtB secret police and later cooperated with the archdiocese in Trnava.
In his testimony, Archbishop Zvolenský testified that at the time he did not have access to the archdiocesan bank accounts and had no knowledge of the alleged transfer of money by Sokol, his predecessor, to Náhlik’s account. He said he only learned about the case from the media. He said that when the Bratislava-Trnava Archdiocese was separated in 2008, all the book-keeping records remained with the Trnava Archdiocese and the Bratislava Archdiocese started from scratch.
Source: SITA
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
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