THE CORRUPTION affair in which former Transport Minister Jozef Macejko from the ruling Slovak Democratic and Christian Union and several other former ministry officials are suspected of corruption and misusing information and power will be investigated by an independent group of prosecutors, the attorney general, Dobroslav Trnka, decided.
According to the daily SME, Trnka's decision came after two separate prosecution bodies gave two different opinions on the case, which goes back to 2002 and in which the Swiss firm Stadler and the French Alstom competed in a state tender for the supply of 35 light trains.
While the District Prosecutor's Office in Nitra proposed that the case be shelved, arguing that the collected evidence was insufficient and unconvincing, the Special Prosecutor's Office wanted to forward the case to court.
To protect against bias, Trnka decided that the files should be reviewed by independent prosecutors who were so far uninvolved in the case. In the 2002 train affair, Macejko was suspected of favouring the French firm Alstom, although the Swiss Stadler proved the better competitor in the tender, SME wrote.
It is suspected that Macejko was therefore intentionally trying to halt the contract with Stadler.
