European Court of Human Rights Turns Down Jaroslav Hascak's Complaint

Bratislava, October 17 (TASR) - The European Court of Human Rights turned down the complaint lodged by Penta financial group co-owner Jaroslav Hascak on September 24 as inadmissible, seeing as the financier hasn't used all domestic options of appeal yet, TASR learnt from Justice Ministry spokesperson Miriama Gasparikova on Thursday. Hascak filed a complaint with the European court over the police crackdown at Penta headquarters in December 2020. According to the European court, there's no reason to doubt that Hascak has had theoretical as well as practical legal avenues to claim damages under the law on the state responsibility in Slovakia. The crackdown by armed police strike team took place on December 1, 2020, in Bratislava's Digital Park over the Gorilla scandal. Then-Penta head Jaroslav Hascak was arrested and charged with corruption and money laundering, and the tycoon spent several weeks in police custody. In late August 2021, the Prosecutor-General's Office dropped the charges, prompting the Justice Ministry to apologize to the financier on behalf of the state for the charges and the prosecution in custody. In December 2022, Hascak and other individuals were charged with corruption in the Gorilla case again, with a prosecutor dropping charges in September this year. mf