Last year, the Specialised Criminal Court imposed the highest number of sentences for corruption to date. It is significant that former special prosecutor Dušan Kováčik, who was supposed to stand in the front line of the anti-corruption fight, became the symbol of the cleansing of society from corruption.
Before the 2020 parliamentary elections, the fight against corruption had become the No 1 campaign issue that helped the OĽaNO movement (Ordinary People and Independent Personalities) win the elections. The cabinet, headed by Igor Matovič, pushed through numerous proposals into the government’s programme declaration to curb unfair practices. The media was filled almost daily with revelations of details of corruption scandals of the former government. There were even calendars with crossed-out faces of the accused, and coalition politicians claimed that the police finally had their hands untied in the fight against crime.
Three years later, new elections are coming, three governments have changed in the meantime, and politics is dominated by other issues. Instead of fighting corruption, the opposition speaks about a political effort for liquidation; several of those who were “struck-off” are at liberty; and the financial tycoon Jaroslav Haščák, known from the Gorilla case, has even received an apology from the state for his unlawful custody. On the other hand, there is quite a number of former public officials who have been indicted and also convicted.
One can have mixed feelings about these developments. So what are the real and data-supported facts of the fight against corruption over the last three years? In order to offer the exact answer, Transparency has collected and studied in detail over three hundred court decisions. The following conclusions can be drawn from this exercise, elaborating on our partial findings that we presented at the beginning of the year.
No longer just “small fry”
In total, between 2020 and 2022, the Specialised Criminal Court adjudicated on 288 corruption cases. The vast majority of cases that come to court end in conviction. This has been true since our 2017 analysis. There were only 15 acquittals in the period under review, i.e. less than 5% of cases.
It is not true that these are mostly high-profile cases, quite the opposite. But two of these cases did actually resonate in the media as well. One of them was related to the dismissal of the action against the former head of the secret service Vladimír Pčolinský (the case was thus returned to the prosecutor’s office), the other concerned the acquittal of Eva Kyselová, the judge of Žilina Regional Court. Both decisions have therefore not yet brought the proceedings to a final conclusion. Of the remaining cases, only one case of acquittal concerned a bribe of more than €5,000.
The most important piece of information from our analysis is that really big cases are finally coming to court. Some of these cases are not yet concluded by a final decision, and proceedings that are still under investigation must also be taken into account, but a change in trends can already be identified today.
In our previous analysis three years ago, we noted that mainly small bribes of up to €100 were usually being prosecuted, while more significant cases were as scarce as hen’s teeth. This is no longer true today. Although petty corruption makes up the largest portion of adjudicated cases, almost a fifth of the decisions concern cases with a bribe of €5,000 or higher.
More importantly, it is finally no longer the case that only the “small fry” are brought to justice. As many as 72 cases, or one quarter of the decisions, involved public figures, with eleven of these being of such high gravity that they resulted in unsuspended sentences.
Politicians are still waiting for the verdict
The category of “public officials” no longer features only health professionals and police officers, as was the case in the past, but also judges, prosecutors and persons in high-level management positions in the public sphere. Also, the seriousness of these cases and the need for a high degree of resilience to various forms of pressure show how important it is to have specialised judges. Just for comparison, our last analysis in 2020 identified 28 convictions in this category.
During the period under review, the Specialised Criminal Court imposed four sentences of more than 10 years for corruption. One of the most important cases that have been adjudicated is undoubtedly the case of special prosecutor Dušan Kováčik, whose original 14-year sentence was reduced to 8 years without probation by the Slovak Supreme Court. The reason of the conviction was accepting a €50,000 bribe.
Ex-members of the Slovak Intelligence Service and the Police Corps, Pavol Gašparovič and Ladislav Vičan, also received significant sentences in the first instance proceedings. However, instead of 11 and 10 years of imprisonment, the Supreme Court finally decided on 22- and 20-month sentences, respectively, for indirect corruption. They were considered to have accepted bribes for exerting influence over the powers of the Director of Financial Administration Criminal Office.
Another ex-policeman expected to spend more than a decade behind bars is Marián Kučerka, who recently had his 11-year sentence commuted to ten and a half years, along with forfeiture of his property. He was found guilty of having accepted €25,000 and €200,000 in 2016 and 2017, respectively, for influencing the investigations into the cases known as “Valčeky” (rollers) and “Jopi Trade”.
A number of other, already decided cases will be captured only in our subsequent analysis, as the decisions were made only in 2023 (e.g. M. Repáková, F. Imrecze).
In addition, several cases involving politicians will be decided in the coming period. The current Governor of the National Bank of Slovakia and former Minister of Finance Peter Kažimír got a penal order in 2023, but the proceedings continue. Court decisions are pending, for example, in the cases of the former Secretary of State Monika Jankovská or ex-minister and current member of parliament Peter Žiga. The Specialized Criminal Court has recently also sentenced the former chief of the Slovak National Party Ján Slota to two years suspended for bribery.
Reasons often remain hidden
A long-standing problem in the adjudication of corruption cases is the low level of transparency in the proceedings. More than two-thirds of cases have been concluded by plea bargain or penal order. These are tools that make it possible to speed up the procedure, but this also goes at the expense of a transparent statement of reasons for a decision.
Experts vary in their opinions on this practice. Expediting the proceedings is understandable and desirable particularly in simpler cases and when the defendant confesses. However, in recent years, a very undesirable phenomenon has also come to the fore, related to low transparency and the increasing volume of litigated cases – the questioning of court and prosecutorial decisions.
The most prominent example are the so-called penitents, i.e. persons accused of criminal activity who have decided to cooperate with the police and prosecutors. In exchange for testimony that may expose further criminal activity, they largely gain an advantage in their own proceedings. Such testimonies are often crucial, as without them it is impossible to convict other perpetrators. The problem, however, is the credibility of witnesses, who have an undoubted incentive to skew their testimonies for their own salvation, and also the proportionality of the benefits they win. The European Court of Human Rights has recently reproached Slovakia for this issue (e.g. the case Adamčo v. Slovakia, although it does not concern corruption).
As these cases are either decided by the prosecutor, or a plea bargain is reached, the public does not know the detailed reasons for the sentence reduction. Subsequently, such cases become easy targets for discrediting, for example by politicians. The debate on the need for an increased level of transparency is therefore fully legitimate, especially in the area of at least partial justification of plea bargains or the availability of certain types of prosecutor’s decisions.
For this reason, for example, the repentant ex-judge Vladimír Sklenka, former vice-chair of Bratislava I District Court, is missing from the analysed decisions, despite the fact that he admitted having accepted bribes of more than €200,000. Not only has he not been convicted for his actions, but for a long time his property has not been seized either. In the end, the prosecutor seized an apartment that Sklenka owned.
Penitents are key to corruption
The shortcomings in building the prosecution case on the testimony of a penitent were also evident in the first-instance decision in the case of the former chair of Žilina Regional Court Eva Kyselová. From the court’s detailed statement of reasons of nearly thirty pages we learn that “the charges against the defendant are based solely on the highly questionable testimony of a witness – discredited by the very same witness who cast doubt upon his own plea agreement, with several of the acts being identical to the acts for which the defendant was charged…”
However, it is certainly not possible to conclude from these examples that every testimony of a cooperating defendant is unreliable and that this institute should be erased from our legal system. A review of the decisions examined also confirms that without such testimonies, it would not be possible to uncover extremely serious criminal activity, the background to which only the persons involved can reveal. It is true, however, that their testimonies must be treated critically in light of the character of the witness, and the court is supposed to solidly make it clear in its decision.
No confession means jail even for a bunch of radishes
Let us elaborate on the appropriateness of penalties a bit further. Indeed, our third analysis of corruption decisions again shows there are cases where the amount of the bribe and the punishment imposed are controversial.
The most resonant example is the five-year prison sentence inflicted by the court to the former head of the Labour Office in Piešťany. She was accused to have repeatedly accepted bribes in her public office – an undisclosed amount of vegetables, namely peppers, tomatoes, radishes, some wine of an unknown brand and chocolate. In a not-yet-final decision, the court notes that it found only one mitigating factor for the defendant: “The only reason why it is necessary to deal with the circumstances of the case appears to be the fact that the amount of the bribe consisted only in a few pieces of vegetables or a bottle of wine and chocolate… the value of the bribes, however, is not a qualifying moment for the constituent element of the crime of accepting a bribe.”
For comparison, the former head of the Financial Administration Lenka Wittenbergerová, convicted of accepting a €50,000 bribe, got a two-year suspended sentence and a fine in the amount of the bribe received. Confession is what distinguishes these cases. On the other hand, her ex-colleagues – the former director of the Legal Services Department of the Financial Administration and the former director-general of the Economics Department – were sentenced to three years with probation and a fine for accepting bribes of €30,000 and €20,000, respectively. They refused pleading guilty or cooperating with the prosecution and appealed the decision.
However, the analysis of the verdicts shows that Slovaks do not put limits to their creativity when it comes to bribery. There were as many as 60 cases where the Specialized Criminal Court convicted the accused even for providing or receiving non-financial benefits. In addition to wine or sweets, there are various more curious bribes. A policeman from Banská Bystrica was offered a flight in a fighter jet, a tax office inspector got three bags of corn and a district office worker a ton of soil.
There is no reason for penalty reductions
It is already clear that other major cases will come to the fore during the analysis of the period beyond 2022. Some of them are already legally concluded, others are reaching the final stage, and we can expect to learn their results soon. So the fight against corruption has really taken off on a scale never seen before.
In summary, not only has the number of sentences imposed increased (a total of 224 in 2022, an all-time high), but also the size of the cases in which they are imposed. Just to set the record straight, it should be stressed that the number of punishments does not equal the number of cases, as several punishments may be imposed for one act. However, the number of serious convictions, in which the Specialised Criminal Court imposes unsuspended sentences, is also increasing significantly. It still holds that if a case is brought to trial, it usually ends in the conviction of the defendant.
A look at the cases tried by courts also confirms that there is no need to lower penalties for corruption when amending the Criminal Code. Unsuspended sentences still constitute a significant minority of proven cases, with the Specialised Court having a relatively high degree of discretion. We have also identified cases where the Court of Appeal concluded that a sentence was disproportionately high, leading to its subsequent revision (this actually happened in the case of Dušan Kováčik, whose original sentence was eventually reduced by the Supreme Court from 14 to 8 years).
What should be done next?
There are also some major challenges for the future. The need for increased transparency in statements of reasons, especially for co-operating defendants, is being highlighted as perhaps never before. After all, Slovakia has been repeatedly reproached by the European Court of Human Rights for shortcomings in this area. The biggest concern, however, remains whether there will be undue interference in investigations and judicial proceedings after the September elections.
The amendment to the Criminal Code, which has gone through expert discussion under Minister Viliam Karas, offering a compromise solution to the current state of affairs, is still on the table. But during the past months there have also been some radical voices which, if heard, could lead to significant reductions in criminal penalties, even for the most serious offences.
Another major challenge is that the police, the prosecution office and the courts should be able to exercise their powers without interference from politicians or any third parties. While a professionally-led debate seeking to bring improvements is entirely appropriate, purposeful interference in the structures of law enforcement authorities and the judiciary should be completely out of bounds. Already today some threats are being made that smack of revenge rather than seeking solutions for the rule of law.
Ján Ivančík
This output was supported by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and also by the Integrity Watch 3.0 project funded by the European Internal Security Fund.
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We wholeheartedly thank our excellent volunteer Jana V. for the translation of this analysis into English.