The publishing house 7 Plus Company lost another legal round to Prime Minister Robert Fico on March 25 when the Bratislava Regional Court ordered the weekly to apologise and pay him €9,958 in damages for an article attributing personal responsibility to the PM for having an alleged gangland member freed from police custody, the TASR newswire wrote.
A writer with 7 Plus had blamed the prime minister, as a co-author of Slovakia's Criminal Code amendments, for being instrumental in releasing a mobster from custody. The court rejected the company's appeal, saying making the connection between the two was wrong and thus violated the prime minister’s rights to be protected against injury to his name.
There are now a total of around ten Fico versus 7 Plus defamation and libel suits in the court system. So far, Fico has also won two other cases against 7 Plus and has been awarded €74,000 in total. TASR
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
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