Slovak investigative reporter, girlfriend found shot dead
PRAGUE (AP): A SLOVAK investigative reporter and his girlfriend were shot dead in their home in an attack likely linked to his reporting on tax evasion, Slovakia’s top police official said yesterday.
The bodies of 27-year-old Jan Kuciak and his par tner were found on Sunday evening in their house in the town of Velka Maca, east of the capital, Bratislava, national police force president Tibor Gaspar said.
Police went to the house at the request of a worried family member.
Gaspar said the slayings “likely have something to do with his investigative ac tivities.” He declined to elaborate.
Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said if that were the case, it would be “an unprecedented attack on freedom of the press and democracy in Slovakia.”
Fico announced that his government was offering €1 million ($1.23 million) to anyone who helped the authorities find the people responsible.
Reporters Without Borders, a watchdog group based in Paris, noted that Kuciak was the second journalist killed in the European Union in five months.
Daphne Caruana Galizia, a reporter in Malta who investigated corruption, was killed in October by a bomb that destroyed her car. The crime drew attention to financial corruption on the island nation.
Three Maltese men believed to have triggered the powerful bomb that killed Caruana Galizia were ordered in December to stand trial for murder. Investigators think the men were working for someone, but no mastermind has been identified.
In Slovakia, Gaspar said the reporter was shot in the chest and his girlfriend was shot in the head.
He said the k illings were estimated to have taken place between Thursday and Sunday.
He added that Slovakia “has never faced such an unprecedented attack on a journalist.”
Kuciak was working for Aktuality.sk news website. He focused mainly on tax evasion.