One of the richest Slovak businessmen, Jaroslav Hascák, was taken into custody on Friday night. An investor who has also acquired great political influence is charged with money laundering and bribery. The Slovak police appear to have launched another wave of arrests.

Jaroslav Hascák was arrested Tuesday at Digital Park, the headquarters of the Bratislava-based investment company Penta. The police took the businessman in handcuffs in a rather spectacular operation: although Penta had previously cooperated with the company’s investigating authorities for a long time, the businessman was kidnapped by masked policemen armed with submachine guns, who practically occupied the entire headquarters during the operation. And in the meantime, they hurried: first they took Hascák, and then they took him back to the office building, because according to the rules, he had to be present during the search of the house in his office. According to Slovak sources, if the courts prove the charge of bribery of a particularly large amount, you could be sentenced to up to 20 years in prison.

Photographed in Bratislava on December 1, 2020, Jaroslav Hascák, the $ 1 billion leader of investment group Penta Investments (b), is accompanied by police officers after his arrest.

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The theatrical performance is strange only because Hascak went to the police a day before the action and testified about the charges against him. Now the competent court decided to order preventive detention because it believed that if Hascák could defend himself freely, he would withdraw the evidence, influence the witnesses and obstruct the investigation.

Hascák was detained a few days after authorities arrested Lubomír Arpás, the former head of the Slovak secret service, the SIS counterintelligence division, and four other people on 24 November. One of the four was lawyer Frantisek Polak, who defended, among other things, the mob leader Mikulas Cernak, who was sentenced to life imprisonment.

The Gorilla case is back

The highly influential Hascák arrest means that the Slovak authorities are continuing to investigate the “Gorilla case” that broke out a decade ago. The scandal began after unidentified individuals uploaded Gorilla documents to the Internet in December 2011, documenting that the Penta financial group owned bribes negotiated with politicians, ministers and government officials in a 2005-2006 apartment in Bratislava. According to Slovak newspaper reports, an organ similar to the voice of Robert Fico, among others, can be heard on the recording. Before the current wave of arrests, arrests had been made in the previous case: the “Gorilla case” also ended the career of former police chief Tibor Gaspar.

According to the Hungarian news portal parameter.sk in Slovakia, Hascák’s arrest and suspicion is related to the fact that he allegedly paid former senior SIS official Lubomír Arpás for the sound recordings made in the Gorilla case. Investigators said that Arpás, after leaving SIS, took the audio recordings of the Gorilla case and then offered them to Hasca. And Hascák was willing to pay because the recordings also compromised him.
Changed prosecutors

The Gorilla case was overseen for years by Special Prosecutor Dusan Kovácik, but he was also arrested in mid-November. The prosecutor was suspected of being involved in a criminal organization and abuse of power: he allegedly helped sink several mafia cases.

The codename Gorilla comes from a Hungarian police officer in Slovakia, Zoltán Varga. Penta executives discussed several bribery cases with high-ranking state officials at Varga’s Bratislava apartment, and because Varga is a tall, strong man, the investigation was codenamed Gorilla. By the way, authorities were suspicious: Peter Mravec, head of the SIS analysis department, lived in a house that also housed Varga’s apartment, and noted that Penta cars and state officials often appeared in the area at the same time . The SIS was then allowed to “wire” the meeting room.

Persistent outrage

The current wave of arrests is certainly related to the fact that two years ago it sparked national outrage, and ultimately led to the fall of the government, because the best-known Slovak investigative journalist, Jan Kuciak, was killed along with his girlfriend.

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The murder was allegedly ordered by a billionaire Slovak businessman, Marian Kocner. Kocner was convicted in February of this year, but in the second instance, the court acquitted the businessman because the judge held that circumstantial evidence was not sufficient to establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

One of the interesting things about the case is that Hascák, 51, had previously had a business partnership with Kocner, who, whether or not he ordered Kuciak’s murder, repeatedly threatened the journalist investigating the dubious cases. Kocner is also involved in the Gorilla case, according to the leaked images, the businessman instructed his friend, then attorney general Dobroslav Trnka, how to act in his position.

Prime Minister Igor Matovic has also spoken out on the matter, partly thanks to his electoral victory by promising to cleanse the corrupt elite. “The mafia is as strong as the state. Take aim, ”the politician wrote in a Facebook message.

Leader: Slovak businessman (s) accused of ordering the murder in the Basin Law Academy courtroom on September 3, 2020, as the trial for the murder of Slovak investigative journalist Ján Kuciak and his partner Martina Kusnírová.



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