Parliamentary Chair and head of the coalition We Are Family party Boris Kollar admitted on Thursday that his party is interested in legally amending the length of custody aimed at preventing evidence and witness collusion, also referred to as 'collusive custody'. He said the party is considering the move partly because of its previous nominee for the post of Slovak Intelligence Service (SIS) head Vladimir P., who has been remanded in the said type of custody after the police charged him with accepting a bribe. Kollar criticised the fact that the former Intelligence head has been in custody for two months, but his oath of secrecy still has not been lifted from him. "I find this unacceptable and unfathomable," he said, noting that President Zuzana Caputova is ready to lift the oath if she is asked to do so by an investigator in the case.
A draft bill to this effect was recently submitted to Parliament by We Are Family MP Petra Hajselova, despite the fact that Justice Minister Maria Kolikova (For the People) had signalled that she was preparing a similar bill of her own. According to Kollar, We Are Family approached the minister with this issue back in the autumn of 2020, several months before Vladimir P. was remanded in custody. Both Kollar and Hajselova claimed on Thursday that if We Are Family and Kolikova manage to agree on a single bill with Kolikova, Hajselova will withdraw her draft.
The ex-SIS head has been in custody since March 29, after the National Crime Agency (NAKA) charged him with accepting a bribe from business tycoon Zoroslav K. The bribe, worth €40,000, was meant to persuade Vladimir P. to have SIS drop the monitoring of Zoroslav K. In April, Vladimir P. was charged with another corruption crime, which has not been specified in detail. He categorically denied the latter charges.
Experiments with shortening the duration of custody are extremely risky, Vice-Premier and 'For the People' chair Veronika Remisova stated on a social network on Thursday. Remisova pointed out that in the case of influential powerbrokers who face charges, the risk of them manipulating witnesses or obstructing justice is too great. "For the indicted, it's the only way to avoid punishment," she said, adding that the state is tasked with preventing such behaviour.
Remisova pointed out that the police and prosecutor's office have had their hands untied since the election of Igor Matovic's government in early 2020. "I didn't go into politics with the intent to cover up for the people whose practices I had been criticising for years. Because of this, I think that the experiments with shortening custody carry extremely high risks," she reiterated.
Source: TASR
