Police Corps President Tibor Gašpar (source: Sme)
Interior Minister Robert Kaliňák is not interested in hearing from Marek Gajdoš, head of the team investigating the Gorilla file, who recently announced he is leaving due to a bad working environment.
The leaked Gorilla file started one of the most serious corruption cases in Slovak history; a document which purports to describe conversations covertly recorded by the country’s SIS intelligence service between 2005 and 2006 which suggest that corrupt links may have existed between senior politicians, government officials and business people.
Sme daily on October 20, published partial results of the Gorilla investigation with statements from unnamed politicians confirming that the financial group Penta tried to corrupt some politicians. However, those statements were unofficial and police could not use them in their investigation.
The parliamentary defence and security committee held an extraordinary meeting behind closed doors on October 28 to discuss the Gorilla case and Gajdoš’s voluntary departure.
The opposition, which initiated the extraordinary session of the committee, also wanted Gajdoš to attend, but Kaliňak would not permit this.
“Police officers and investigators never attend committee meetings,” Kaliňák said, as quoted by the TASR newswire. “Committees mainly invite representatives of state bodies, and Gajdoš is bound to secrecy, so he couldn’t say anything.”
The talks have been postponed and will continue a day later.
“We didn’t summon the committee to acknowledge the interior minister’s information, but to listen to what the minister, the Police Corps president and investigator Gajdoš have to say,” said Richard Vašečka of Ordinary People and Independent Personalities (OĽaNO), as quoted by TASR. “It would be very desirable if he could speak here as well; not about classified facts, but about what has happened.”
Vašečka claims that Gašpar only provided the committee with statistics, such as how many cars and phones were available to the investigation team but nothing relevant.
