On Monday, Education Minister Martina Lubyová (a Slovak National Party/SNS nominee) announced she would fire the ministry's Director General of the science and technology section, Marek Hajduk, following the scandal regarding state stimuli for research and development. The measure came after opposition MP Veronika Remišová announced that her party has filed a criminal complaint on suspicion that offenses may have been committed, of subsidy fraud and misuse of authority of a public official. "A huge number of flaws and inconsistencies surfaced in the whole scandal regarding subsidies for research and development that the education minister has so far been unable to explain. Some companies have received certain funds in violation of the law, as they have not been registered as Partners of the Public Sector," said Remišová. A project named NaviDate is said to have received 94 points and finished slightly above the red line, which brought it an award of €700,000 from the state. Remišová stated that the project had originally obtained only 84 points which wasn't nearly enough, and that the project was to have been taken over by other companies. The company NaviDate reacted by saying that did not check on the way the points were calculated. The "Let's stop corruption" foundation has reported that similar mistakes were made in five projects.
While OLaNO and the Freedom and Solidarity parties are calling on Prime Minister Peter Pellegrini to sack the Education Minister, Martina Lubyová herself has confirmed that one person failed in the assessment of projects for research and development stimuli. She has called for the person to clarify the situation. "The person doesn't want their name to be published. We'll file a criminal complaint in order to verify the assessment in which the points didn't add up, to verify whether it wasn't a case of dishonest conduct," stated Lubyová. Due to mistakes in the assessment of applications for stimuli she will dismiss the general manager of the Education Ministry's science and technology department Marek Hajduk. He was not available for comment. The Education Ministry has allocated a total of €33.4 million to research and development projects.
