Lawmakers on Wednesday, September 16, voted down a bill concerning the origins of property that would have required individuals and corporations to establish the origin of wealth that went beyond the limits of their known sources of income.
The bill was drafted by MPs from the Conservative Democrats of Slovakia (KDS) party Vladimír Palko and Pavol Minárik. It required the support of 90 MPs in order to become law, but was defeated at its first reading when only 41 MPs of the 133 present voted in favour of it.
The legislation was to have governed the actions of state authorities vis-a-vis impounding the property of individuals and corporations found in court to have been obtained from illegal incomes. Under the measures, prosecutors would have initiated court proceedings in cases in which total assets exceeded demonstrable income by the equivalent of at least 1,000 times the minimum wage. Among those MPs voting against the bill were a majority of deputies from the ruling coalition parties the Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS), Smer and the Slovak National Party (SNS). By contrast, the proposed law received virtually unanimous support from Christian-Democratic Movement (KDH) and Hungarian Coalition Party (SMK) MPs. Fewer than half of the deputies for the largest opposition party, the Slovak Christian and Democratic Union (SDKÚ), voted in favour.
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
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