Questions Swirl around Actions of Slovakia’s Prosecutor General

Ever since Pčolinský was detained, Sme Rodina has publicly declared that the charges against him are unlawful, suggesting they were being pressed as revenge within the bigger picture of tensions between and within law enforcement institutions in Slovakia.

Tensions in Slovakia's criminal justice system have been growing after the police started prosecuting major corruption cases in the wake of the 2018 murder of investigative journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kušnírová, involving dozens of people, among them high governmental officials and judiciary figures, such as the former special prosecutor or former head of the tax administration.

In this context, the Pčolinský case is a very sensitive one and, as such, politicians, experts in law and commentators were quick to call on Žilinka to live up to his pre-election transparency promise and thoroughly explain the decisions of the Prosecutor General's Office. Žilinka was appointed to his seven-year term by President Zuzana Čaputová on December 10.

President Čaputová was among those to raise their concerns when she admitted that the dropping of the charges came as a surprise.

"I now expect that the prosecution service, within its legal possibilities, will clarify the facts that led to the dropping of charges and answer the questions it has raised," Čaputová stated.

Observers worry that without proper explanation, the prosecutor general is contributing to the further decline of trust in the judiciary, already very low in Slovakia.

Director of the Let's Stop Corruption Foundation, Zuzana Petková, has been following police and prosecution service matters in Slovakia for years, both as a journalist and later as a transparency watchdog. She admits having had many...