The Governor of the Slovakian Central Bank and former finance minister faces corruption-related charges again. The National Criminal Agency (NAKA) investigator charged Peter Kažimír, the sitting National Bank of Slovakia (NBS) governor who formerly served as finance minister under the governments of the now-opposition Smer, in a corruption case. The governor does not feel guilty and will file a complaint, as confirmed by his lawyer Ondrej Mularčík, the Denník N daily reported.
The case concerns the period when Kažimír was the Minister of Finance. František Imrecze, the former head of the financial administration, who is being prosecuted in several cases and is cooperating with the police, testified against him. Imrecze said that Kažimír handed him an envelope containing €48,000. According to him, the minister was supposed to act as a mediator.
“We see this charge as disregarding the general prosecutor’s decision to scrap the original charges,” said Mularčík, as quoted by the TASR newswire. He noted that the charges are related to the same subject matter as the previous ones.
Last year, the governor of the NBS was accused of paying a bribe of €50,000 to František Imrecze, then head of the Financial Administration of the Slovak Republic. Peter Kažimír was then supposed to act as a mediator. However, he resolutely refused this role. Immediately after the indictment, he declared: “I do not feel guilty of any crime.”
Prosecutor General Maroš Žilinka canceled the first accusation brought by the special prosecutor through his deputy Jozef Kandera. The prosecutor’s office justified the cancellation of the original charge by saying that the law was violated during the prosecution.
