By Oyintari Ben
Peter Kazimir, the Chairman of Slovakia’s central bank, is currently charged with bribery a second time.
Charges related to the alleged bribe, which dates back to when he was a finance minister, had previously been withdrawn by the prosecution.
He has denounced the accusation and said he did nothing wrong.
Mr. Kazimir is a member of the governing council of the European Central Bank and served as the Slovak finance minister from 2012 to 2019 in the Smer party’s centre-left administration.
The National Bank of Slovakia released a statement from him in which he declared, “The accusation that I should have bribed a senior [tax] officer is an absolute fabrication.” “I have not broken any laws.”
Numerous governmental figures in Slovakia have been charged with corruption throughout the years, which has plagued the country.
Frantisek Imrecze, a former chief of the tax administration who is facing multiple charges and is cooperating with the police, is one of them.
Last year, Mr. Kazimir was initially accused of corruption. He was allegedly involved in providing Mr. Imrecze a bribe of around €50,000 (£43,000), according to Slovak media.
However, the case was apparently withdrawn since it relied completely on Mr. Imrecze’s testimony.
As part of its ‘Mytnik operation’ into claims of corruption in the acquisition of significant IT systems for the financial administration, the National Criminal Agency has filed charges against a number of individuals, including Mr. Imrecze.
After the EU’s anti-fraud office, Olaf, discovered an alleged fraud involving undervalued textile imports into the EU from China, Mr. Imrecze resigned from his position as head of Slovakia’s financial administration in 2018. Millions of Euros in unpaid sales tax and customs fees are estimated to have been lost by the EU as a result of the losses.
A young investigative journalist who wrote about dishonest businessmen was killed in 2018.
After Jan Kuciak and Martina Kusnirova were killed, riots broke out, leading to the resignation of both the police head and Slovakia’s Prime Minister, Robert Fico.
