Former Smer MP Ľubica Rošková in a courtroom in Pezinok, western Slovakia, on April 12, 2024. (source: TASR - Martin Baumann)
On Tuesday, the Specialised Criminal Court found former Smer MP Ľubica Rošková guilty of fraud and damaging the EU’s financial interests, due to obtaining agricultural subsidies for fictitious arable land during the Smer party’s reign in Slovakia.
From 2016 to 2017, the 69-year-old former lawmaker obtained €152,000 from the Agricultural Paying Agency.
“My client did nothing wrong,” Rošková’s lawyer Ondrej Urban said last week, as quoted by Denník N. “Even if she had committed the crime, the prosecutor proved nothing,” he added, questioning the presented evidence.
Judge Milan Cisárik disagreed, saying that Rošková used farming as a cover for receiving agricultural subsidies. He reclassified the crime and sentenced Rošková, who headed the Smer party’s branch in the Michalovce district, eastern Slovakia, to a three-year probation. She will also have to pay the sum that she received from the paying agency.
Rošková, who is infamously known as the “Countess”, had originally faced 7-12 years in prison.
The verdict is not final yet. Like Rošková’s lawyer, Prosecutor Matúš Harkabus has appealed.
“We’re not satisfied with the legal qualification of the crime for which she was found guilty,” the prosecutor explained, as quoted by the news agency SITA.
Yet, he welcomed the guilty verdict.
