Police spokesperson Michal Slivka has confirmed for TASR that an investigator of the Special Team assigned to the Gorilla case has pressed charges of founding, orchestrating and supporting a criminal group as well as aggravated money-laundering against Penta Financial Group's former co-owner Jaroslav H. [name abbreviated due to legal reasons - ed.note]. Also charged are former head of the National Property Fund Anna B. and ex-economy minister Jirko M., all of whom were involved in the Gorilla scandal, which allegedly concerned shady collusion between political parties and big business.
According to Slivka, the investigator launched a criminal prosecution and indicted a total of seven individuals on Wednesday, November 23. Four of them face charges of aggravated money-laundering, whereas six have been indicted with violating their commitments related to the administration of entrusted property.
The Gorilla file was a supposed Slovak Intelligence Service transcript of wiretapped conversations between then-head of Penta Financial Group Jaroslav H. and politicians who discussed kickbacks in privatisation deals and state transactions in 2005-06. The defendants deny the authenticity of the file, which was leaked to public in November 2011 by an anonymous source. The file caused public condemnation which led to mass anti-corruption protests in 2011 and effectively sunk the SDKU-DS party of former Prime Minister Mikulas Dzurinda in the polls.
In December 2018, the police discovered an audio recording of the 'Gorilla' conversations in the house of controversial entrepreneur Marian K. during the investigation into the murder of journalist Jan Kuciak. Its authenticity was confirmed by then-head of the Gorilla investigation team Lukas Kyselica. Several media later received online links to the audio recording. However, then-SIS head Anton Safarik confirmed in 2019 that the Gorilla document had been shredded in the meantime, so it wasn't possible to verify its authenticity.
Jaroslav H. was also arrested over the Gorilla case in 2020. Police Lynx Commando, a special ops strike team, launched a crackdown at Penta's HQ in Bratislava on December 1, and Jaroslav H. spent several weeks in custody, charged with corruption and money-laundering. The Prosecutor-General's Office dropped the charges in August 2021, prompting the Justice Ministry to issue an apology to Jaroslav H. regarding the custody and unlawful charges on behalf of the state.
It was the Startitup website that first broke the story.
(TASR)
