The Slovak Democratic and Christina Union (SDKÚ-DS) chairman, Mikuláš Dzurinda, along with his party colleagues Pavol Frešo and Lucia Žitňanská, filed a complaint with the Prosecutor-General's Office on September 21 aimed at the complete cancellation of the agreement between the Slovak Environment Ministry and the Interblue Group on the sale of Slovakia's surplus carbon-dioxide emission quotas, the TASR newswire reported.
“There was certain damage and losses on Slovakia's part in the sale of emissions (quotas), and there's a threat that certain others will follow. As we've discovered, the state institution concerned - the ministry - isn't using all legal options available, so we've decided to do so as Slovak MPs,” said Dzurinda.
“We've set out our legal arguments with the complaint - that we can see the violation of certain laws: ministers didn't act in the public interest, which they pledged to do, and to which they are also bound by the law on avoiding conflicts of interests. We can also see violations of the law on state-property management and the law on budgetary rules,” added Žitňanská.
When asked whether Deputy PM Dušan Čaplovič, who is running the Environment Ministry on a temporary basis, had not done enough already at the beginning of September by canceling the Interblue Group's right of first refusal when it comes to future quota sales, Žitňanská replied that there was only a theoretical chance of applying this right anyway and added that Čaplovič is acting in a "visibly slow" manner.
Čaplovič's spokesman, Michal Kaliňák, responded to SDKÚ's earlier criticism on September 9 by saying that the acting minister was doing everything possible in the public interest, unlike SDKÚ, which he said had put its own private interests on a pedestal while it was in government between 1998 and 2006. TASR
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
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