Interior Minister and Hlas party leader Matúš Šutaj Eštok. (source: TASR - Jakub Kotian)
"You, sirs, have turned Slovakia into a country in which one cannot live, so please pack up, make yourselves scarce, and please stop talking nonsense about the mafia, because the real mafia is you - the people of [former PM Igor] Matovič, of [former special prosecutor Daniel] Lipšic, of [former police chief Štefan] Hamran, [former acting interior minister Roman] Mikulec and [suspended police investigator Ján] Čurilla," said Hlas party's MP Matúš Šutaj Eštok in September 2022.
The period after the 2020 parliamentary elections could be characterised as a time when high-level corruption began to be genuinely investigated. Based on this promise, the leader of the then OĽaNO movement, Igor Matovič, won the elections and formed a government. The pandemic and conflicts within the coalition government first led to a government reshuffle, and later to its collapse. Before last year's elections, the government was led by former banker Ľudovít Ódor and his technocratic cabinet. After the 2023 elections, Smer returned to power and formed a government with Hlas, which was founded by Smer renegade and President Peter Pellegrini, and the far-right Slovak National Party (SNS).
One of the first moves Šutaj Eštok made after becoming the interior minister last year was to suspend the entire elite group of National Crime Agency (NAKA) investigators centred around Ján Čurilla, who investigated top corruption cases involving people appointed by the Smer party under the previous Smer-led governments. Šutaj Eštok had been a Smer member before he joined Hlas in 2020.
Six policemen, whom the minister refers to as "the Čurillas", were the priority target. As an opposition politician, he used to call them "cowboys who distort justice", "a bunch of goons" or "cronies".
"If such a pestilence were not under the protection of [then] President Čaputová and [then technocratic] Prime Minister [Ľudovít]Ódor, they would be put out of service a long time ago," said MP Šutaj Eštok in August 2023.
However, when as minister he was recently interrogated by a police investigator regarding the suspension of the Čurillas, he played down his previous fiery statements. Šutaj Eštok claimed that he had no relationship with the group, felt unbiased towards them and did not see any problem in his statements.
"These are only abbreviations or names used for media," claimed Šutaj Eštok, when asked by the investigator on how they were supposed to understand the minister's previous statements regarding the Čurillas.
The NAKA - Západ (western Slovakia) department interrogated Šutaj Eštok at the end of February this year, following a criminal complaint filed against him by the five suspended police officers. In addition to Čurilla, it was filed by Branislav Dunček, Róbert Magula, Milan Sabota and Štefan Mašin.
The minister is suspected of abusing the powers of a public official, since he himself suspended the Čurillas, even though he did not have to. At the same time he also ignored the fact that they had received whistleblower status and as such had been under the protection of the Office for the Protection of Whistleblowers, which has to approve any labour-related move against whistleblowers.
