Marian Kočner (source: Sme - Gabriel Kuchta)
Former employee of the SIS intelligence service, Peter Tóth, is not the only one hired by businessman Marian Kočner to spy on journalists. Tóth allegedly made Miroslav Kriak, previously an agent of the communist-time intelligence service ŠtB and the current one, SIS, to follow them.
Since the 2012 election (when the Smer party re-took the power, ed. note), Kriak heads a department of the Criminal Office of the Financial Administration that falls directly under the FA head, Lenka Wittenbergerová, the Denník D daily wrote. His department focuses on methodology, strategies and legislation.
It was ex-journalist, ex-SIS agent Peter Tóth who is thought to have recruited him to monitor the murdered journalist, Ján Kuciak; the two may have met during their work for SIS, according to Plus 7 Dní weekly. Tóth himself told police he was not alone in spying on the journalists.
The Financial Administration as promised Denník N to send a statement on the case. Police refuse to react, arguing that media coverage complicates their investigation.
UPDATED: FA reacts
“We have immediately started checking on the serious information published by media,” the statement sent by the Financial Administration reads. “We have already communicated about it with prosecution bodies, including the General Prosecutor’s Office. We also parallelly make internal investigation and steps that we cannot specify as for now,“ the FA wrote, adding that it would not like to be linked with the facts published in media and with practices connected to criminal activities.
UPDATED: The Financial Administration informed on the afternoon October 24 they have dismissed their employee involved in the case.
