It was 31st August 1995, when eight men kidnapped and abducted Michal Kováč jr., the son of the then Slovak president Michal Kováč. They left him in front of the police station in the nearby Austrian town of Hainburg. The Austrian police arrested the president's son based on an international warrant. The principal witness, who was a former member of the secret service, confessed later that it was the Slovak secret service which was involved in the abduction. The dispute over the name of the new director of the secret service was one of the main clashes between then Slovak president Michal Kováč and Prime Minister Vladimír Mečiar. Eventually, it was Ivan Lexa, the right-hand man of the prime minister, who assumed the post of the secret service director. He is also one of the thirteen accused in the case of the abduction, which has not been resolved even 25 years later. The case had a tragic turning point, when Róbert Remiáš, a policeman investigating the crime, was murdered.
After Vladimír Mečiar became an incumbent president in 1998, he issued amnesties for those who were involved in the abduction, including Ivan Lexa. Mečiar claimed that nobody can prove that the crime took place.
Former President Michal Kováč pointed to the suspicions that Mečiar himself could have been involved in the plotting of the abduction and influencing the otherwise independent investigation.
New hope for the closing of the case came in 2017, when the Slovak parliament scrapped the so-called Mečiar amnesties. Despite numerous judges studying the 20,000 page long criminal file, the case has not yet been reopened.
