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Freso: Fico Falls into His Own Trap
Thursday 11 February 2010 Zoom in | Print page
Bratislava, February 11 (TASR) - Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico has fallen into his own trap, Opposition SDKU-DS party MP (and Bratislava VUC region governor) Pavol Freso said on Thursday.
"Making up fabrications and inspecting serendipitous connections via firms all over the world indicate that it isn't SDKU-DS but the premier who can find himself in trouble. Today's published leads about how the garage company Interblue Group stands interconnected with Slovakia put the whole scandal into a different light," said Freso.
He also pondered why Premier Fico dismissed environment minister Jan Chrbet (SNS), who intended to cancel the contract with Interblue Group in summer last year, suggesting that such a step might have put an end to the Government's emissions racket. "Maybe Fico wants to pay a personal visit to Switzerland so bad because of reasons entirely different than those officially presented,," said Freso.
On Sunday (February 7), Fico announced that he was preparing for a working visit to Switzerland to get information on bank account owners vis-a-vis SDKU-DS financing scandal. Fico said that he can't accept to "have a political party committing money-laundering via tax havens, and subsequently putting these very money to use in the political struggle".
Freso claimed that SDKU-DS will continue to pay close attention to the surplus emissions scandal, and analyse the newly-revealed connections published by media. "The greatest scandal of the Government won't slip our attention. We won't allow Fico to cover this up with his fabricated inventions. We're convinced that people in Slovakia get to know soon who robbed them of more than €66 million," said Freso.
On Thursday, Hospodarske Noviny daily reported that the lead from US company Interblue Group is connected via a host of companies all the way to Slovakia to Fico's former company. As an opposition politician, he used to own a firm called R.F. Development. This was renamed Elwing Slovakia in 2008 with its headquarters in Bratislava. According to the Slovakia's Commercial Register, Elwing Slovakia is managed by Jozef Varejcko, who at the same time is the manager of another company based at the same address - Elwing Slovakia I. The exclusive owner of Elwing Slovakia I is a company called Elwing Limited, which has its headquarters at 10, Dunstan Close, London - the very same address at which the so-called "post-box" companies - Destor Limited and Diamond Hotels labelled by Fico as SDKU's money laundering operation and linked to the shady sale of the Hotel Forum - are registered.
According to an extract from the British Register of Companies, Elwing Limited was until November 2009 managed by Michael Ian Bulliman from Dubai. The address of another three companies belonging to Bulliman - Intercontinental Investment Group LLC, Identity Ventures LLC and Tocashare LLC - is identical with that of the Interblue Group. This is nonsense, claimed Fico's spokesman Brano Ondrus. "We have no idea from where the Interblue Group trail leads," he stated.
Slovakia sold 15 million tonnes of emission quotas to the Interblue Group for €75 million, at a rate of €5.05 per tonne. According to the Opposition, media and the present ministry management, this sum was sum was about half what it should have been. As well, an extra euro per tonne should have been paid by the company for green projects but wasn't. Interblue manager Jana Luetken said on December 2 that the projects aren't well defined, and that the company won't pay an outstanding amount of €15 million to Slovakia.
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