Businessman and former Smer MP Bohumil Hanzel, who has stated that the Smer party traded official state posts in return for sponsorship money, has withdrawn a criminal complaint that he filed on May 25 concerning a threatening email sent to him, the TASR newswire reported.
Hanzel withdrew the complaint after a former Slovak Deputy Speaker of Parliament, Ján Majer, confessed that he had sent the e-mail and apologised to Hanzel for doing so.
“I think he's a simple man who did this under the influence of information presented by the media. If it was really him ... as it can never be ruled out that it wasn't really him,” Hanzel told TASR, adding that he took the matter seriously, but was not scared.
According to the Sme daily, Majer said that he wrote the e-mail to Hanzel due to a “serious illness and under the influence of various scribbles by journalists”. According to Majer, it was only a warning.
“I definitely didn't want to threaten him,” he claimed. The e-mail warned Hanzel that he'd better ‘shut up’.” Majer also wrote that Hanzel's business success was only based on his party membership [he was number 8 on Smer's slate in the 2002 election], a statement that Hanzel called nonsense, adding that he was in business for 20 years, while Smer has only a ten-year history.
Hanzel, who parted ways with the party in 2006, has said that he saw a notary-authenticated copy of an agreement between Smer and five sponsors concerning specified places on Smer's election slate. He also said that he personally attended many meetings with sponsors who provided some Sk60 million (€1.99 million) to the party in 2000-02. Smer chairman (and now Prime Minister) Robert Fico is also said to have solicited sponsors for the party.
Source: TASR
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
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