Slovakia’s central bank boss convicted of bribery

Slovakia’s central bank boss convicted of bribery
Опубликовано: Friday, 14 April 2023 05:16

Peter Kažimír fined €100,000; prosecutor appeals verdict, meaning a trial will follow.


The governor of Slovakia’s central bank, Peter Kažimír, was convicted of bribery on April 3 by Slovakia’s Special Criminal Court and ordered to pay a fine of €100,000 or serve two years in jail, in a ruling first reported publicly Thursday.

Kažimír, a former Slovakian finance minister, is also a member of the European Central Bank’s Governing Council, which sets interest rates.

“I’m innocent, despite the court’s order, which I have yet to receive,” Kažimír said Thursday in Washington, where he has been attending the International Monetary Fund’s spring meetings.

The special prosecutor who filed the charges against Kažimír appealed the court’s ruling, according to Jana Tökölyová, a spokesperson for the General Prosecutor’s Office, meaning that a trial will follow in the months to come. According to a February 16 social media post by the Special Prosecutor’s Office, the charges include “crimes of corruption related to the tax audits of multiple companies.”

Slovak Prime Minister Eduard Heger called on Kažimír to step down. "It is unacceptable for a person convicted of bribery by a court to hold the post of governor of this respected institution," Heger said during a press conference, according to Reuters.

Before assuming his role at the Slovak central bank four years ago, Kažimír was a senior member of former PM Róbert Fico’s social-democratic Smer-SD party, serving intermittently as the country’s finance minister or deputy prime minister from 2006 to 2019.

After Fico lost power in 2020, Slovak police under new leadership pursued dozens of investigations into oligarchs, former politicians and senior bureaucrats on corruption charges, especially related to alleged public procurement and VAT fraud.

Kažimír’s name came up in the testimony of a subordinate, František Imrecze, a former head of the Financial Administration, a tax and customs bureau that falls under the finance ministry. Slovakia’s NAKA major crimes unit charged Kažimír with corruption in 2021, alleging that he delivered €48,000 to Imrecze in 2017 to influence evaluations by Imrecze’s unit of VAT refund requests by select companies.

Those charges were overruled in June by Jozef Kandera, the country’s first deputy general prosecutor, who faulted the special prosecutor for basing them only on Imrecze’s testimony. Kandera ordered the prosecutor to review the evidence and rule again; the charges were resubmitted in mid-February.

Imrecze has testified as a key witness in multiple corruption cases from the pre-2020 era when Smer-SD was in power. In November, he discovered a GPS locator under his car and subsequently was placed in the witness protection program.

“I didn’t commit any crime and I’m confident I will prove my innocence during the main trial or an appeal in Slovakia or in the EU,” Kažimír said from Washington.

The European Central Bank declined to comment on the verdict when contacted by POLITICO.

This article has been updated with more details on the conviction, Peter Kažimír’s response and comments by the Slovak prime minister.

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