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SDKU Pushes for MPs' Inquiry Into SIS Over Emissions Deal
Tuesday 24 November 2009 Zoom in | Print page
Bratislava, November 24 (TASR) - The opposition SDKU-DS party has asked chairman of the parliamentary special committee for supervising the Slovak Intelligence Service (SIS) Pavol Prokopovic (an SDKU nominee) to summon a session of the committee and initiate an MPs inquiry into SIS, SDKU MP Pavol Freso announced on Tuesday.
The initiative is aimed at finding out whether SIS dealt with "the garage sale of emissions" and whether the authorities responsible, including the Government and Prime Minister Robert Fico, were aware of the sale, he added.
"I assure you that this scandal will never be swept under the carpet, not until it's clear what's behind it," said Freso, who also called the sale of Slovakia's surplus carbon-dioxide emission quotas to the opaque Interblue Group in 2008 the biggest scandal of this Cabinet and Slovakia's largest since the scandalous privatisation of chemicals company Nafta Gbely in the 1990s.
"I firmly believe that this MPs' inquiry will take place, as from a long-term perspective it's crystal clear that standard measures, even including checks by Parliament, are failing due to the idleness of the Government and Prime Minister Robert Fico, and we really want to expose the background," said Freso, stressing that Parliament hasn't been able to discuss the matter for the past five months.
SDKU vice-chair Ivan Miklos noted that the act on SIS obliges the body, which is funded from taxpayers' money, to gather and assess information on "facts that might jeopardise or do serious harm to Slovakia's economic interests."
"There's no doubt that the garage sale of emissions did indeed cause serious harm to Slovakia's economic interests. Slovakia sold them (the quotas) to an unknown company for €5.05 per tonne, while Spain showed interest in purchasing them for €10 per tonne," noted former finance minister Miklos, pointing to Interblue's shady background.
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