A MAN identified only as František B., an entrepreneur who appeared on the police corps’ mafia lists and is considered one of the last three living ringleaders of the so-called Sýkora gang, has been detained by police over ‘drug activities’, the TASR newswire reported on October 8.
Police President Tibor Gašpar told TASR they will reveal further details on October 9.
František B. was among four successors to take over the reins of the Sýkora gang after its erstwhile boss and founder, Miroslav Sýkora, was shot dead on a parking lot outside the Holiday Inn hotel in Bratislava in 1997. Besides František B., other contenders have been Róbert L., who has been charged with 10 murders but remains at large, Peter Čongrády, who was murdered in 2004, and Ladislav Bališ, who was sentenced to 25 years in jail earlier this year for planning a murder.
František B. owned a private security service called DKFB (standing for the ‘detective agency of František B.’) that guarded over a number of hypermarkets, companies, the port of Bratislava and restaurants. He also used to engage in dealing in cigarettes and in the catering business, and also owned property in the United States, TASR has learnt from several sources.
A trial involving František B. and several other defendants has been under way at Bratislava III District Court for more than four years now. It concerns an alleged protection racket and extortion involving a pub in Bratislava.
Source: TASR
Compiled by Radka Minarechová from press reports
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