The financial daily Hospodárske noviny will have to pay a Sk1 million settlement to Ivan Lexa, onetime director of the Slovak Intelligence Service (SIS), for a piece they published that described him as a "small mobster from the family of a former leading communist."
The daily has lost a libel trial at the Bratislava District Court, in which Lexa sued the author Michal Berko for his contested article, which detailed the former SIS director's detention in South Africa.
Lexa is accused of having ordered the murder of SIS collaborator Róbert Remiáš in March 1996, a supposed attempt at suppressing the testimony of witnesses to the abduction to Austria of the son of former Slovak President Michal Kováč.
Compiled by Beata Balogová from press reports
The Slovak Spectator cannot vouch for the accuracy of the information presented in its Flash News postings.
