Agriculture Minister Ľubomír Jahnátek claims not to have known that he owned arable land in his native village of Komjatice; and therefore didn’t declare it in his property declaration as required by law. Now parliament’s conflict of interests committee will look into his claim.
“The minister claims that he didn‘t know about it,” said committee Chairman Miroslav Beblavý (Slovak Democratic and Christian Union-SDKÚ) as quoted by the TASR newswire. “He‘s explained that he inherited the land in the 1980s-90s, when according to him, he wouldn‘t necessarily have been aware of it."
“We‘ll ask the land registry whether they can confirm the minister’s statement that he didn’t know, and whether he wouldn’t obviously have known," Beblavý said.
It is important, according to him, to verify Jahnátek‘s claim in order for the committee to decide on this case correctly and so avoid creating a precedent that would be referred to by other public officials choosing not to report accurately in their property declarations.
The committee also requested that state-run lottery company Tipos submit information related to former members of the Tipos board Katarína Štefaničková and Milan Homola, who didn‘t submit their property declarations by the deadline required by law, TASR wrote on November 21.
“If a public official decides on certain types of subsidies, grants, contracts, then they have to declare annually where they’ve worked and what contracts they’ve signed and with whom in order to find out whether they first haven’t given someone some money that they then somehow lived on themselves,” Beblavý said.
(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.
