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Meciar Denies Any Link to Dubious Sale of Land in High Tatras
Tuesday 01 December 2009 Zoom in | Print page
Bratislava, December 1 (TASR) - I'm not co-operating with any private companies and there is no such thing as a company linked to my person, said LS-HZDS chairman Vladimir Meciar after a session of the Coalition Council on Tuesday.
Meciar was speaking in reaction to an article published in Tuesday's issue of SME daily, according to which land restituents received land in the High Tatras that didn't originally belong to them before selling it on immediately at a fraction of its market price to a company called GVM. The daily stated that GVM is linked to Meciar, publishing restituents' claims that it was 'Meciar's people' who helped them to acquire the lucrative plots, which were assigned to them by the Slovak Land Fund (SPF), now under the remit of Smer-SD.
"If you say one more time that a company is close to me, you're a rogue. I won't have such accusations," Meciar told journalists.
According to Meciar, SPF is an autonomous body that makes decisions on its own. "There's a law obliging the state to deal with people who were deprived of their property and land and return it (to those people). When the state makes such a transfer, that's the end of the matter. Nobody from the Government or Parliament will decide what a private owner does with the property," argued Meciar.
Parliamentary Chairman Pavol Paska (Smer-SD) said in connection to the issue that the published information is not factual. He labelled it a construct.
According to the daily, SPF director Miroslav Mihalik (Smer) and his deputy Adrian Sandorcin (HZDS) signed a contract in September 2009 according to which restituents from Kosice region received land in the High Tatras covering an area of 1.6 million square metres that was located around 200 km from the plots that they should have received.
In addition, the restituents, the buyer (GVM) and the way in which the whole transfer was carried out were exactly the same as in a scandal in 2007 that involved land in Velky Slavkov (Presov region).
In the case of Velky Slavkov, the contract was signed by coalition HZDS nominee Branislav Briza. When the scandal came to light it caused turbulence in the governing Coalition. Miroslav Jurena (HZDS) had to resign from the post of agriculture minister. Prime Minister Robert Fico, calling the Velky Slavkov case theft, pushed for land allocations to be halted and for the complete restructuring of SPF.
At that time, GVM lost its chance to built a golf course in Velky Slavkov, as the land went back to the state. The daily views the new deal with the restituents as a kind of 'compensation'.
"I'm not saying that this is an extremely beneficial sale for us, but if it weren't for them (GVM), we'd never have acquired the land where we did," the daily quotes one of the restituents as saying in its Tuesday edition.
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