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Miklos: Not First Time State Land Fund Managers Have Been Dismissed
Wednesday 02 December 2009 Zoom in | Print page
Bratislava, December 2 (TASR) - Six out of seven members of the Slovak Land Fund (SPF) managerial board that were dismissed by the Government on Wednesday due to revelations of a dubious land transfer in the High Tatras have been dismissed from the SPF management before in the past, SDKU-DS vice-chairman Ivan Miklos told a press conference on the same day.
SME daily informed on Tuesday that SPF signed a contract in September according to which restituents from Kosice region received land in the High Tatras covering an area of 1.6 million square metres that didn't originally belong to them. They sold it on immediately at a fraction of its market price to a company called GVM. The daily stated that GVM is linked to Meciar, and published restituents' claims that it was 'Meciar's people' who helped them to acquire the lucrative plots from SPF, which is now under the remit of Smer-SD.
"This can't be called anything other than 'Circus Fico'," said Miklos, recalling that the Government dismissed SPF general director Miroslav Mihalik and six members of SPF board. According to Miklos, five of the board members and Mihalik were already dismissed in January 2008 due to 'Velky Slavkov' (Presov region) - a scandal with the same scenario, which was labelled as "a theft" by Prime Minister Robert Fico at that time.
Miklos points out that, meanwhile, the dismissed managers got their positions in SPF back somehow. "I expect that they'll appear somewhere again," added Miklos.
The scandal came to the light after the information appeared in SME daily on Tuesday, but Miklos doesn't believe that Fico learnt about it from the papers. If it was so, that would be a big failure of the Slovak Intelligence Service (SIS), which is supposed to inform constitutional authorities about such issues. The Opposition tried to initiate an MPs' enquiry at SIS via the Parliamentary Committee for Inspection of SIS but didn't succeed.
"The fraud has been completed, the lands have been transferred and today Robert Fico is transferring responsibility to the Prosecutor's Office to resolve it (the case)," said Miklos.
Pavol Freso from SDKU-DS informed that the Parliamentary Committee for Agriculture agreed on the same day with an MPs' enquiry to be carried out at SPF. It should take place on December 8. "We're receiving signals that it isn't true that there weren't any free lands in the east of Slovakia," he said concerning the fact that the restituents, who acquired lucrative lands in the High Tatras were from Kosice region, about 200 kilometres far from the allocated property.
"One of the persons who was dismissed by the Government today is Miroslav Sebek. I'd like to point out that this gentleman has been at his post as Environment Ministry State Secretary for two years", noted Miklos.
The restituents, the buyer (GVM) and the way in which the whole transfer was carried out mirrored exactly the scandal in 2007 that involved land in Velky Slavkov.
When the scandal of Velky Slavkov came to light it caused turbulence in the governing Coalition. Miroslav Jurena (HZDS) had to resign from his post as agriculture minister. Fico pushed for land allocations to be halted and for a complete restructuring of SPF.
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