The coincidence was not just the killing of a journalist but also links with Malta
Marian Kočner, the man charged with ordering Slovak journalist Jan Kuciak’s and his fiancee’s murder, has links with Malta, it has been revealed.
As an almost direct result, not only has a former prime minister, Robert Fico, been forced to resign but also, as we report in today’s issue, a complete outsider and an anti-corruption campaigner has emerged as front runner in the presidential election.
As reported by The Shift News, Kočner established two shell companies in Malta linked to political scandal and potential moneylaundering. Kočner’s daughter was married to a Maltese – they have since divorced.
Infamous in Slovakia for having links to organised crime and friends in high political, police, and judicial places, he had also been the topic of Kuciak’s last published article – on a VAT tax fraud scheme that involved him selling apartments to himself for nominal fees.
In 2011, Kočner received €4 million from an unnamed Maltese bank which was then allegedly used to bribe Slovak politicians.
One of the companies he owned in Malta – Investment Holdings Ltd – was set up in 2010 and owned two hotels in Slovakia valued at €21 million.
Kuciak had written over a dozen articles about Kočner, focusing on a long list of corrupt dealings that were made possible due to his connections with the police and prosecution. Then, one day in September 2017, Kočner called him personally and told him “you can be sure that I will start paying special attention to you personally Mr Kuciak”.
The phone call was recorded and reported to the authorities, yet nothing was done, no protection was given, and the threats were deemed “not threatening”. Five months later, the 27-year old journalist and his fiancée were assassinated in their own home.
It is obvious there are many points of convergence between this Slovak murder and that of Daphne Caruana Galizia. Both were journalists, both were anti-corruption campaigners.
There is a stark difference then as our readers will quickly see: although in Malta there are people charged with being the material authors of the murder, in Slovakia it is the person who allegedly was the mastermind, the person who ordered, the double murder who has been accused.
Aktuality.sk editor Peter Bardy who Kuciak had worked for before his death has accused the authorities in Slovakia of fostering a culture of impunity that permitted his assassination by a businessman linked to politics and organised crime.
Bardy wrote that if Kočner had ordered his murder, he did it because he was confident that his friends and his friend’s friends would protect him from justice.
There the similarity ends. There was indeed in Malta a huge wave of anger and protest after Daphne’s murder but that is nothing compared to the massive outpouring of rage after
Kuciak’s death. This anger has had repercussions on the political level, while in Malta the anger is slowly dying out contributed in no small extent by the trick of daily removing all candles and flowers from the Daphne improvised shrine opposite the Law Courts.
There is then the huge difference between a country that has quite recently been under a Communist regime and which has tasted freedom and a country which thinks it is free but where institutions are firmly under the grip of an authoritarian regime.