Region: Gorilla case grips Slovakia

By Beata Balogová

For the Slovak Spectator

"Gorilla" has become a byword in Slovakia for suspicions of widespread political corruption and domestic spying in the wake of an alleged scandal that saw the country's main intelligence agency monitoring a leading investment firm and its alleged outsized political influence.

Shortly before Christmas, a lengthy document emerged that describes an operation conducted by the Slovak Information Service (SIS), the country's main intelligence agency, under the codename Gorilla. The investigation found significant influence by the Penta Financial Group on senior Slovak politicians between 2005 and 2006.

But the revelations have generated another question: Why were the investigation's conclusions covered up for so long?  

As the country moves toward parliamentary elections in March, a new investigation is looking into allegations that Penta unduly influenced Cabinet-level officials in the government of Mikuláš Dzurinda.

The authenticity of the files has not yet been confirmed, and Penta has dismissed the reports, while the SIS has also cast doubt on the credibility of the file. But Tom Nicholson, a former editor-in-chief of The Slovak Spectator and more recently an investigative journalist at the daily Sme and the Trend weekly, said he obtained the very same file and handed it to police in 2009, after which it was "investigated and dismissed within a month."

Nicholson said he believes the material is genuine.

"Political scientists have a useful phrase to describe where Slovakia is at the moment: state capture," Nicholson said. "It refers to a situation where nonpolitical actors, such as financial groups like Penta and J&T, have gained access to levers of power that allow them to dictate legislation and major governmental decisions such as privatization or large-scale public procurement."

As of press time, police and prosecutors had yet to reach an agreement on how to manage a forthcoming investigation.

The lengthy leaked document comprises what appear to be wiretap transcripts, which imply corruption in senior state posts during Dzurinda's second government, which was in office between 2002 and 2006, in connection with the Penta Financial Group.

It features the name of Jaroslav Haščák, Penta's co-owner, and purported conversations and connections between him and ruling coalition politicians from the period, including former Economy Minister Jirko Malchárek, plus some members of the Smer opposition party, Sme wrote.

Haščák, according to the document, discussed with Smer leader Robert Fico "cleaning processes" within the party that removed Fedor Flašík, the husband of current MEP Monika Flašíkova-Beňová, and possible post-election arrangements following the 2006 election, the TASR newswire reported.

Fico, himself a contender to return as prime minister after the March elections, has declined to comment on the Gorilla affair directly.

Nevertheless, he noted that Smer, shortly after assuming power in the summer of 2006, halted the privatization of Bratislava Airport, which would almost certainly have benefited Penta.

"We also prohibited health insurers from making profits," Fico told the TASR newswire. "Penta has a dominant position there."

The alleged leaks from wiretaps that are circulating on the Internet and have been sent to some media outlets are not true, said Penta spokesman Martin Danko.

"We've known for approximately two years that material with this content was circulating among reporters and the Slovak media in various ways," Danko said. "We feel that whoever drafted this document or decided to use the information in this way ... mixed conspiracy theories with generally known facts that occurred in that era."

Danko added that the aim was to harm either Penta or some political parties in the lead-up to elections. He told TASR Penta would seek legal protection from what he called the damage caused to the company.

Alleged cover-up

The Office for the Fight Against Corruption dealt with the case between November 2010 and July 2011, according to Sme. Subsequently, the Military Prosecutor's Office in Bratislava took over the case in September 2011 before announcing the investigation had been concluded.

SIS Director Karol Mitrík blocked the investigation into the alleged Gorilla file, Sme reported. When checking information in the file, the police asked Mitrík to permit SIS employees to answer questions about the Gorilla operation. Mitrík refused to do so, Sme reported, effectively blocking the investigation.

Prime Minister Iveta Radičová said the current SIS leadership is ready to cooperate during the new investigation.

"The investigative bodies now have a second chance to reach a conclusion," a release from the Government Office said.

Meanwhile, Ján Rejda, a former head of the special department at the Office for the Fight Against Corruption, confirmed that some information contained in the leaked Gorilla document is accurate, saying he did, as the report said, visit a wiretapped flat on Vazovova street in Bratislava, where he met a man connected with Penta. He did not deny he gave the man, who was a former colleague, information, but he denied receiving money for it.

According to Nicholson, the relevance of the Gorilla file is that it describes a relationship between an oligarch, the politicians with whom he did business and a hierarchy of political nominees to state institutions and companies who actually conducted this business, which he said meant "kickback-fuelled abuse of office."

"It is described in such detail that it is impossible to doubt it, once you actually read it," Nicholson said. "And, above all, it arose from a court-approved surveillance operation by an official state institution that caught these actors red-handed."

Politicized investigation

As to what society can learn from it, Nicholson says people should look not only at the contents of the file, but also at how any serious investigation by police was foiled for six years. He says he had to submit the file twice: first in 2009, then a year later, following the general election, when the new leadership of the anti-corruption unit asked for it again.

"When I told them they already had it, they told me with rather shame-faced expressions the file had been inexplicably lost," Nicholson said. "The [new] investigator on the case was a good and experienced man, but he was up against an entire establishment."

According to Nicholson, SIS Director Karol Mitrík stymied the investigation until the police team was broken up in 2011.

"After that, the military prosecutor was able to put it to sleep quietly in September," he said. "So what happened? Nothing - no serious investigation and certainly no serious challenge to the current SIS leadership."

When asked whether he saw any hope the Gorilla affair would be properly investigated, Nicholson said "no."

"This file not only endangers individuals but also how power is exercised in Slovakia," he said. "It's a huge blow to the integrity of the state itself. So, understandably, no state institution is capable of pursuing the case to its inevitable conclusion. What I expect is the General Prosecutor's Office will claim to be seriously investigating until the elections."

Several media outlets received the file in late December as an e-mail attachment that claimed it was an excerpt from a book written by Nicholson. He is indeed working on a book related to the Gorilla file.

"I don't know who published the file on the Internet," Nicholson said. "But the whole thing was done very amateurishly: It was published just before Christmas and just after the death of Václav Havel, when it was most likely to be overtaken by other stories and the general oblivion of the Christmas season."

Beata Balogová can be reached at

news@praguepost.com