(source: SITA)
MPs from the opposition SDKÚ-DS party, Pavol Frešo and Lucia Žitňanská, submitted a draft revision to the Act on Land Arrangements to parliament on January 11. The draft required the Slovak Land Fund (SPF) to make public the deals it had signed transferring ownership of land to private companies close to the government.
Frešo said the move was a response to corruption at the SPF, and to the fact that the government had not taken action after it was discovered that SPF managers had transferred valuable land under the High Tatras to a firm co-owned by a former bodyguard of coalition party leader Vladimír Mečiar.
On January 15, board members at the SPF representing the Smer and SNS parties of the ruling coalition resigned. Those members nominated by the HZDS party, including the man who signed off on most of the suspicious contracts, Branislav Bríza (below), were dismissed by the government on January 16.
