Marian Kocner not successful at the General Court of the European Union

The General Court of the European Union on Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit filed by controversial Slovak entrepreneur Marian Kocner against the EU Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation (Europol) with regard to the investigation into the murder of journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiancee Martina Kusnirova. According to the court, Kocner failed to prove that Europol is responsible for the fact that the Slovak media released his personal data on the internet and that he was included in a list of mafia members. Marian Kocner filed the lawsuit against Europol when the Slovak media in May 2019 released transcripts of his personal communications that were stored in one of the mobile phones. He demanded that the agency pay him damages worth €100,000 for non-pecuniary losses he had suffered as a result of the damage to his honour, professional reputation and the right to respect a person's private life. As for the inclusion of Kocner's name on a list of mafia members and the damage Kocner allegedly suffered as a result of this, the court stressed that the Slovak media called Kocner "a mafioso" even before the murder of Kuciak and Kusnirova, a fact which rules out the possibility that this labelling could have originated from the report submitted by Europol in January of 2019.