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SaS: Fico Should Withdraw From Smer Slate Over Shady Funding
Monday 24 May 2010 Zoom in | Print page
Bratislava, May 24 (TASR) - Chairman of the extra-parliamentary Freedom and Solidarity (SaS) party Richard Sulik on Monday called for Prime Minister Robert Fico to take his name off the Smer-SD slate for the general election on June 12 over the suspicious funding of his party.
"We'd want to remind people that (SDKU-DS chairman) Mikulas Dzurinda renounced his place on the party list over accusations (of shady funding) levelled by our premier. I'm therefore calling for Robert Fico to act as a responsible statesman and also step down over even more serious suspicions," said Sulik.
"Various cases emerge regularly, but what we're experiencing now in the case of the Smer-SD party has gained proportions never experienced by Slovakia before," said the SaS chair.
According to Sulik, his party views Smer co-founder Bohumil Hanzel's statements and the published copy of an illicit contract between entrepreneur Lubomir Blasko and erstwhile Smer campaign chief Fedor Flasik as trustworthy.
"If these suspicions prove to be true, the perpetrator could face many years in prison," said Sulik.
Hanzel last week stated that the Smer election campaign in 2002 didn't cost €350,000 as officially stated, but as much as €9.4 million, with the money given to the party mainly by wealthy entrepreneurs under dubious circumstances. Hanzel also said that Fico told him personally at that time that it's legitimate for sponsors to demand state commissions and posts. Meanwhile, SME and Novy Cas dailies published a copy of the contract between Flasik and Blasko, which stipulated several senior posts in the state administration for the latter's people if Smer got into government.
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