Courts: Trial of NBS Governor Slated to Continue in April

Bratislava/Pezinok, March 11 (TASR) - The trial of Slovak central bank (NBS) governor and ex-finance minister Peter K. [name abbreviated due to legal reasons], who faces charges of corruption, is slated to continue at the Specialised Criminal Court in late April, with another session scheduled for May 23, according to the timetable released on the Justice Ministry website. The judge adjourned a session in December, as he had to rule on a complaint of bias raised by the defence team. At the last main session, the defence requested that the criminal prosecution of the NBS governor should be halted due to the new shorter statutes of limitations introduced by the 2024 amended Penal Code. According to the prosecution, Peter K., when he was finance minister, asked former head of Financial Administration Frantisek Imrecze to make sure VAT refunds worth a total of €3 million were paid to several selected firms in advance and gave Imcrecze a bribe of €48,000 in exchange for this. Peter K. insists on his innocence, claiming that he's never given any bribe to anyone and views the prosecution as unlawful. This is the second charge of bribery that the NBS governor has faced, with the first charges pressed in the autumn of 2022 and cancelled by the Prosecutor-General's Office. In April 2023, a Specialised Criminal Court judge found Peter K. guilty of bribery and fined him €100,000. As both the prosecutor and the defendant appealed against the verdict, the case has proceeded to the current trial. mf/df