Bratislava / Pezinok The court in Slovakia sent co-owner of the Penta Investments financial group Jaroslav Haščák into custody on Friday evening, whom the police detained on Tuesday and accused of corruption and money laundering. The prosecutor told the press. The defense filed a complaint against the decision of the judge of the Specialized Criminal Court, Haščák will wait in custody for the verdict of the Court of Appeal.
Co-owner Penta Haščák resigned from executive positions in the group after Tuesday’s detention |
The financier’s lawyer has previously described his client’s accusations as unfounded. Doubts in connection with the act were again expressed by the head of the Slovak Civil Secret Service (SIS), in which two other accused worked in the Haščák case.
One of the richest Slovaks, Haščák, is suspected in the case of alleged illegal trade in wiretapping recordings in a roughly 15-year-old corruption affair called Gorilla. This concerns suspicions of bribery of high Slovak politicians and officials by Penta.
Along with Haščák, the former director of the SIS counterintelligence, Ľubomír Arpáš, who is in custody in another case, and Arpáš’s wife are also facing charges. He sent him into custody today, as did Haščák; the judge ruled from the morning and also heard the two accused. According to the court, the reason for the prosecution in both cases is the fear that they could influence witnesses or otherwise frustrate the investigation.
According to the Slovak media, the police suspect Arpáša of bringing from the SIS recordings from wiretaps of the apartment, where Haščák met with politicians and officials and where commissions or bribes were discussed. It is said that Arpáš sold the recordings to Haščák in such a way that Arpáš and his wife, also former members of the SIS, founded a company that received 194,000 euros (five million crowns) from a company under the control of a financier for fictitious analyzes and consulting services. In the past, Arpáš claimed that he handed over information and analyzes to the former head of the StB secret police in communist Czechoslovakia, Alojz Lorenc, who worked with Penta.
However, doubts in connection with information about the leak of the recording from the SIS were expressed by its boss Vladimír Pčolinský. “As for the sale of the recording – depending on how familiar I am with the ongoing wiretapping processes, I’m not at all sure that Arpáš had access to the Gorilla sound recording,” Pčolinský told the Aktuality.sk portal.
A recording of about 39 hours from wiretaps in the Gorilla affair leaked to the Internet last year. In 2018, it was seized by the Slovak police during house searches of the prosecuted businessman Marian Kočner.
Co-owner Penta Haščák denied in court that he knew from Kočner about the planned murder of Kuciak |
The corruption affair broke out at the end of 2011, when someone published documents called Gorilla on the Internet, which, according to unconfirmed information, were prepared by the SIS on the basis of wiretaps of an apartment in the wider center of Bratislava. According to Penta’s documents, in exchange for bribes, it gained influence over the privatization and operation of some companies. Penta denies the wrongdoing in the case from the beginning.
The investigation of the Gorilla affair was overseen by special prosecutor Dušan Kováčik, whom the police accused in November this year of corruption, abuse of power and other crimes, according to available information, and the court sent him into custody. For example, the former head of the Gorilla investigation team has complained in the past that Kováčik did not approve some planned actions.
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