A former officer of Slovakia’s National Crime Agency (NAKA), who had faced charges of sabotage, has been reinstated after prosecutors ruled the case against him unlawful. Matej Varga, once accused of ordering a covert investigation into the country’s top prosecutors, will also receive back pay for the months he was suspended.
His lawyer, Peter Kubina, said on social media that the decision showed “it was enough to remind [officials] of a few legal provisions and the possible consequences of violating them”. He added that he hoped other anti-corruption officers from the disbanded NAKA would also be returned to duty, after being suspended by the interior minister, Matúš Šutaj Eštok.
The minister insisted as recently as Monday that the criminal proceedings were still ongoing, arguing that if Varga returned to work “it could endanger the proper performance of public service”. He did not say how.
Kubina noted that while the “minister of revenge”, as he dubbed Šutaj Eštok, had signed the order suspending Varga, it was left to a police official to issue the paperwork lifting the suspension. “This is exactly one of those cases of throwing people overboard that I keep talking about: when the big boss makes a mess, he leaves it to his subordinates to clean it up,” he wrote.
Varga had been accused by the Interior Ministry’s police inspectorate of instructing his team to launch an operation against General Prosecutor Maroš Žilinka and his deputy Jozef Kandera in 2022 without sufficient grounds. The alleged misconduct was linked to parliamentary debates over whether opposition leader Robert Fico, who now serves as Slovakia’s premier, should face pre-trial detention.
In July, the inspectorate argued the move represented an “attack on the constitutional order” and on the functioning of the General Prosecutor’s Office. But the Košice regional prosecutor Branislav Reday has recently quashed the charge, ruling that Varga’s conduct did not meet the legal definition of sabotage or abuse of office.
Kubina praised his client and other sidelined officers, including Ján Čurilla and Pavol Ďurka, as “the kind of policemen you would want on your side if you were ever a victim of crime”.
Juraj Šeliga of the opposition party Demokrati, who had earlier highlighted the unlawful suspension, welcomed Varga’s reinstatement. “Thank God there are still people in the police force who, unlike Šutaj Eštok, respect the law. His bullying will continue, but the truth will prevail,” he said.
Šeliga also called on the minister to apologise to Varga and to act like a man, rather than an “internet troll” — a reference to Šutaj Eštok’s political beginnings, when he worked as an online debater for the Smer party, posting positive comments about the party under news articles.
