National Bank of Slovakia Governor Peter Kažimír will appear in court on bribery charges in July after the Constitutional Court dismissed his complaint over the speed of the legal process.
Kažimír was guilty of bribery for acts committed when he was the Finance Minister in Robert Fico’s (Smer-SD) cabinet in 2018 and was sentenced to a €100,000 fine or jail time if he could not pay it.
After Kažimír and the prosecutor’s office filed an appeal that triggered a tumultuous back-and-forth, Kažimír was summoned to appear in court in July after his appeal of the indictment against him was dismissed by the Constitutional Court.
Following his appeal of this first instance court’s decision, Kažimír tried to have the case dismissed by General Prosecutor Maroš Žilinka, who could cancel the charges with a controversial article 363 of the Slovak Criminal Code – something Žilinka did when the Special Prosecutor’s Office first charged Kažimír last year. However, the Office charged him again a couple of months later.
However, before Žilinka’s prosecutor’s office could rule on such a motion for the second time, the special prosecutor’s office filed an indictment, putting an immediate end to the special article 363 proceedings.
Prosecutors believe Kažimír played the role of an intermediary in handing out €48,000 to former tax office head František Imrecze when he was finance minister in Fico’s cabinet, the judge said. Imrecze was charged with corruption in 2020 and is cooperating with the police.
“The accusation that I allegedly bribed a senior official of the financial administration is an absolute lie,” Kažimír insisted and refused to step down after the court order decision.
Because he was sentenced by a Specialised Criminal Court judge based on a court order in 2018, Kažimír’s guilt was ruled only based on the submitted case file and the evidence that emerged from it.
(Michal Hudec | EURACTIV.sk)
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