ONE of the junior ruling coalition members, the Slovak National Party (SNS), has filed a libel lawsuit against both the media and the head of the Parliamentary Health Committee, Viliam Novotný, a deputy for the opposition Slovak Democratic and Christian Union (SDKÚ), the SITA newswire reported.
The Pravda daily upset the SNS by reporting facts which hinted at the party’s involvement in a €7.6-million deal with French company Sanofi Pasteur to supply Slovakia with novel flu vaccine. Pravda wrote that Vladimír Oleár, the assistant of SNS parliamentary deputy Štefan Zelník, who is a member of parliament’s health committee, will benefit from the vaccine contract, as he is the French company’s representative in Slovakia.
A few days later, the same daily reported that a business partner of Zelník’s, Ladislav Čornák, will distribute the vaccine through his company Intec Pharma. Novotný said that Pravda’s revelations confirm that the signing of the deal was postponed until the ‘right’ supplier had been found.
