[CPProt.net] Slovakia: A Lexa-con of Slovak Justice; art sting by former head of the Slovak Intelligence Service

[MusSecNetworkCulPropProtNet]

Slovakia: A Lexa-con of Slovak Justice

by Lukas Diko
31 January 2005

The ghosts of the Meciar past are passing only slowly through Slovak courts.

BRATISLAVA, Slovakia--Of all his alleged misdeeds, it was probably his most
minor, but on 25 January an art sting became the first crime for which Ivan
Lexa, former head of the Slovak Intelligence Service (SIS), was found
guilty.

A Slovak court ruled that Lexa's decision to use $200,000 to purchase a
triptych from the bishop of Banska Bystrica, Rudolf Balaz, in 1995
constituted an abuse of power. The purpose of the operation was to frame and
discredit the bishop, witnesses said. In 1995, the SIS claimed that the
work, Adoration of the Magi, was listed on Slovakia's register of national
cultural artifacts and could not be legally sold.

However, independent records indicate that it was not on the list and could
therefore be sold.

The court ruled the operation was illegal as there was no suspicion of
criminal activity involving the bishop's office.

In 2000, the government returned the picture to Balaz.

Lexa was ordered to pay a 500,000 crown fine (roughly $17,000) or to spend
12 months in prison. Lexa will not have to make the choice for some time, if
at all, as he has appealed, claiming that the case was politically
motivated. Lexa showed no remorse, saying he would act in the same way again
if in that situation.

Lexa and his colleagues have been found not guilty in a number of cases,
including the theft of a wiretapping machine. Former SIS officials have been
found guilty in other trials. However, none of the sentences has been
carried out as appeals are pending.

Lexa's co-defendant in the triptych case, his former deputy Jaroslav
Svechota, had already been given a conditional two-year prison sentence and
ordered to pay 11 million crowns (roughly $375,000) in another case.
Svechota died in November 2004.

A MURDERER AND KIDNAPPER?

For many Slovaks, Lexa has become the embodiment of the political misuse of
the security services by Prime Minister Vladimir Meciar between 1994 and
1998. The list of allegations against Lexa's SIS include murder, kidnapping,
collusion with the underworld, surveillance of political opponents and
journalists, theft, counterfeiting identity documents, and plots to foil the
Czech Republic's bid for NATO membership. Like Meciar, Lexa and the SIS are
therefore seen as a major reason why Slovakia failed to enter NATO at the
same time as the Czech Republic, Poland, and Hungary, and why its bid for EU
membership faltered badly.

Lexa himself still faces charges of fraud, sabotage, and illegally
destroying SIS weapons.

But the gravest charge brought against Lexa is that he ordered the murder in
April 1996 of Robert Remias, a case that relates to the most politically
charged allegation against him--that he masterminded the kidnapping in 1995
of Michal Kovac, son of then-President Michal Kovac. Remias, a former police
officer, was a friend of Oskar Fegyveres, an SIS employee and key witness
who confirmed that the SIS had masterminded the kidnapping of Kovac Jr.

The kidnappers were apprehended in Austria as they tried to spirit Kovac
over the border to Germany, where he was wanted on commercial charges. After
a confession by Fegyveres, the Austrian authorities sent Kovac Jr. back to
Slovakia rather than Germany and raised the possibility that members of
Slovak government agencies were involved.

Police now believe Lexa contracted the killing of Remias out to an
underworld boss, Miroslav Sykora, who gave two men--Imrich Olah and Jozef
Rohac--2 million crowns (now worth about $68,000) to carry out the
commission.

The investigations have been complicated because the murder took place
almost 10 years ago and because Sykora was killed in 1997. Rohac and Olah
have been missing for several years.

Svechota, Lexa's deputy in the SIS, said in a 1999 interview for the weekly
Plus 7 dni that Meciar was "an ideological father of the kidnapping" and
that Lexa managed the whole operation.

Svechota said the main aim was to discredit President Kovac and to
destabilize the Slovak political scene.

LEXA AND THE COURTS

Lexa himself published a book in late 2004 entitled Unos (Kidnapping)--but
it revealed nothing about the kidnapping of Kovac Jr. Instead, it gave an
account of several years that he spent on the run from the Slovak courts
before being seized in South Africa. Lexa maintains his extradition was a
kidnapping.

Lexa was captured in 2002 in the South African guest house of a former
colleague, two years after he fled Slovakia. At the time of his escape, Lexa
faced eight charges, but he had been released from prison in July 1999 after
three months in custody.

Only a few months after his extradition, a court again ordered his release
on the grounds that there was no reason to believe he would try to escape
the country.

Lexa has also proved successful in the libel courts, winning 1 million
crowns in a libel case against a national newspaper, Hospodarske
noviny--twice the sum he has been ordered to pay in the triptych case. He
also won a ruling in a libel case against the weekly Domino Forum, but a
final decision is still awaited in that case.

Meanwhile, several incidents have prompted claims that Lexa associates are
intimidating people involved in or investigating Lexa's activities in his
time as head of the intelligence agency. In December 2002, a grenade
exploded outside the house of an associate of an underworld boss named
Mikulas Cernak. Police believe it was a warning to Cernak not to testify
against Lexa in the Remias case. A filmmaker making a documentary on the
kidnapping reported receiving threats from a former member of the SIS.

Court cases relating to Lexa have regularly caused controversy, prompting
the evident relief expressed by Vladimir Farkas, spokesperson of the Banska
Bystrica bishopric, when he said after the triptych case that "It seems that
the rule of law is starting to follow morality."

Some are proceeding slowly--sometimes because of the judges. One of them was
officially dismissed from some SIS cases after taking none of the steps
required from her for over a year. In some instances, defense lawyers have
successfully slowed down proceedings.

In others, such as the Remias murder, investigations are ongoing.
Investigations were closed in August 2004, but the prosecutor ordered new
interrogations of witnesses. Her decision came just one day before she was
due to hand the case over to a newly established Special Prosecutor's
Office, which is responsible for criminal cases involving public officials
and organized crime.

In mid-December, Special Prosecutor Dusan Kovacik, who is now in charge of
the investigation, said he hoped to make a final statement in mid-January.
However, there has been no update on the case since then.

Officials said in December that three more witnesses had implicated Lexa in
the killing.

If found guilty, Lexa faces a life sentence.

LEXA AND PARLIAMENT

Some of the accusations against the SIS may never be resolved in any court.
It looks unlikely, for example, that Lexa will ever face a court over his
role in the Kovac kidnapping itself because of an amnesty issued by Meciar
in 1998 near the end of his premiership, when he assumed the presidential
right to issue amnesties after Kovac's term ended. The amnesty originally
covered investigations into the kidnapping of Kovac Jr. Meciar later
extended the amnesty to include crimes connected with the kidnapping.

The courts look likely to hear the Remias case, despite its connection to
the kidnapping. However, overturning the amnesty relating to the kidnapping
itself looks like an almost insurmountable obstacle. In 1999, Prime Minister
Mikulas Dzurinda tried to circumvent the amnesty, but after an appeal by
Svechota, the Slovak Constitutional Court upheld Meciar's decision.

The Christian Democrats (KDH), a member of the current governing coalition,
have twice tried another route to get around Meciar's move--by amending the
constitution. The party twice submitted bills to that effect, but they
failed to win the necessary 90 votes in the 150-member chamber.

The KDH is currently planning a third attempt, but statements in the weeks
since the KDH's announcement indicate the bill will fail once again.

Some commentators believe the KDH's bid for support is being complicated by
suggestions that Dzurinda's party, the Slovak Democratic and Christian
Union, has acted in concert with Meciar's Movement for a Democratic Slovakia
(HZDS) in some parliamentary votes. The parties are cooperating in some
parts of the country ahead of regional elections in December 2005, and
Dzurinda, the man who led the effort to undo Meciar's legacy, has praised
the HZDS as a constructive and responsible opposition.

While political analysts and some politicians say that ghosts of the Meciar
past will only be chased away by a fair trial, it seems very possible that
the most political charge against Lexa may never be heard in court.