Ondrej Krajňák, head of the Nation’s Memory Institute (source: Sme)
The Nation’s Memory Institute (ÚPN) has turned to the Constitutional Court over its dispute with Czech Finance Minister of Slovak origin Andrej Babiš.
The institute calls for cancelling the verdict issued by the Supreme Court in February with which it turned down the extraordinary appeal of the ÚPN. If the Constitutional Court accepts the complaint, the whole case will return to the Constitutional Court, the SITA newswire reported.
“As ÚPN chair I cannot allow our past to be redrawn by controversial court rulings,” chair of the ÚPN board Ondrej Krajňák said, as quoted by SITA.
The ÚPN considers the Supreme Court ruling illegitimate and claims the court should have discussed the appeal and cancelled the rulings issued by the lower-instance courts in the dispute with Babiš, who was allegedly listed as an agent cooperating with the communist-era secret police ŠtB.
The institute points to several non-standard events and circumstances that occurred at the Supreme Court before dismissing the appeal.
“On its own initiative, the Supreme Court asked the Interior Ministry to exempt former ŠtB agents who testified in Babiš’s favour at the district court from the pledge of confidentiality,” the ÚPN claimed in an official statement, as quoted by SITA. “With such a move, the Supreme Court wanted to additionally rectify the illegal testimonies of these witnesses.”
Moreover, the ÚPN claims the court did so without offering the institute the ability to comment on it. The Supreme Court closed the case only two working days after receiving the controversial decision on exempting the former ŠtB agents from confidentiality.
The ÚPN has already lost the dispute with Babiš in June 2015, after the Bratislava Regional Court had confirmed the ruling of the district court.
The appeal will now be discussed by a Constitutional Court senate composed of Ladislav Orosz, Ľudmila Gajdošíková and Lajos Mészáros, the TASR newswire reported.
