The General Prosecutor's Office is supervising a criminal investigation into suspicions linked to libel, violation of personal rights, jeopardising of confidential matters and misconduct of a public official reportedly linked to statements made by Daniel Lipšic, then interior minister, early last year, the TASR newswire reported on Thursday, January 24, citing General Prosecutor's Office spokesperson Vladimíra Gedrová.
According to reports in several media, the criminal proceedings are related to public statements made by Lipšic about alleged money laundering at Privatbanka as well as to his blog, in which he alleged that Jirko Malchárek, a former economy minister, had been bribed by Jaroslav Haščák, a co-director of the Penta financial group, which owns Privatbanka. The criminal investigation was launched on December 20, 2012. According to Gedrová, nobody has yet been officially charged. She refused to reveal any further details about the case.
Lipšic, who is now an MP and leader of a new party, New Majority (NOVA), told journalists on Thursday that he would not be intimidated by what he called "oligarchs".
"I was informed several months ago that a number of oligarchs, white collars, were putting pressure on the General Prosecutor's Office to initiate a criminal prosecution against me and other people, who ordered investigation of the Gorilla scandal," Lipšic said, as quoted by TASR. He emphasised that people who were criticising Gorilla [a file purportedly containing transcripts of alleged wiretap recordings made by the SIS intelligence service, documenting conversations between top politicians and businesspeople] and spoke out against it are now being investigated instead of those who were directly involved in the scandal.
"I want to say on behalf of all the people who may be affected by this and who may feel they have to defend themselves that we won't be intimidated," said Lipšic, referring to accusations against "decent police officers, journalists and ordinary people".
Source: TASR
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
The Slovak Spectator cannot vouch for the accuracy of the information presented in its Flash News postings.
