Former president Andrej Kiska arriving at the Poprad court. (source: TASR)
The Poprad District Court found former president Andrej Kiska (2014 - 2019) guilty of tax fraud along with Eduard Kučkovský, director of the former's company KTAG.
On Wednesday, the judge sentenced the ex-president to two years in prison with a three-year suspended sentence, a €15,000 fine, and banned him from executive or statutory positions in a commercial company for six years. Kučkovský received two years with a two-year suspended sentence, a €10,000 fine, and was banned from holding a statutory position in a company for 5 years and 8 months.
Kiska said that he disagreed with the court's decision and appealed.
Political target
KTAG, originally named Kiska Travel Agency, is co-owned by Andrej Kiska and his brother Jaroslav.
The company was alleged to have billed costs that were in fact related to Andrej Kiska's 2014 presidential election campaign as legitimate business expenses, thus committing tax fraud. According to the charges, the company unjustly claimed a VAT refund of €155,000.
Both Kiska and Kučkovský denied the charges and their guilt.
During the initial hearing on June 29 of this year, Kiska claimed that he was being politically targeted, stating that no one in Slovak and Czech legal history had been prosecuted for recording legitimate company expenses that the tax authorities did not dispute.
He emphasised that the investigation had spanned more than eight years and had been suspended twice before the charges were finally brought. Kiska claimed that the process is part of a political campaign against him.
'Deliberately designed fraud'
After the verdict, the judge concluded that Kiska and Kučkovský had unlawfully exercised the right to deduct tax from invoices related to the election campaign, with the intention of obtaining an unauthorised benefit.
The judge said that Kiska was the organiser and he deliberately designed and managed the fraud. Kučkovský then made sure that all the costs for the presidential campaign were included in the company's accounting.
According to the verdict, these costs were neither related to the business of the company nor to the contract that the company signed with Kiska.
The former president said that the court refused to hear the forensic expert and did not take into account the statements of some witnesses.
