Slovaks protest over corruption claims

Thousands of Slovaks staged a protest rally in Bratislava on Friday, angered by allegations that politicians, officials and business executives discussed kickbacks in return for procurement and privatisation contracts.

The protests came amid signs of growing discontent with official cronyism and corruption in central and eastern Europe, especially in countries that have suffered severe austerity measures. Romania's government resigned this week after three weeks of demonstrations.

Slovakia's intelligence agency allegedly bugged meetings between state officials and businessmen in 2005-06, in an operation codenamed "Gorilla". A report claiming to be the result of that surveillance has appeared on the internet, throwing the country's politics and business into turmoil.

The Gorilla file casts Slovakia's main centre-right party, the Slovak Democratic and Christian Union (SDKU), in a particularly bad light. Its leader, Mikulas Dzurinda, was prime minister when the recordings were made.

The party forms the core of the coalition government, which looks increasingly likely to lose parliamentary elections next month. The Gorilla file and a possible election defeat would set back the cause of economic reform at a time when Slovakia, a eurozone member, is trying to cut its budget deficit and is braced for an economic slowdown.

Opinion polls show support for the SDKU at barely 5 per cent - it won 15 per cent of votes in 2010 elections - while the left-leaning Smer party of Robert Fico, the former prime minister, is on more than 40 per cent, enough to deliver control of the 150-member legislature.

Mr Fico, leader of the opposition when the Gorilla recordings appear to have been made, is also mentioned in the file but most of the opprobrium has stuck to Mr Dzurinda and to Ivan Miklos, the current finance minister.

"Fico's followers are less concerned about corruption. This is a much bigger problem for SDKU voters," said Grigorij Meseznikov, a Slovak political scientist.

Mr Dzurinda and Mr Miklos pushed through deep economic reforms in the late 1990s that turned Slovakia into one of the fastest growing countries in Europe but the process of selling state companies has been dogged by accusations of corruption.

One of the country's leading companies, Penta, a private equity and real estate firm, has faced local media reports that a senior figure in the company was allegedly recorded in the bugged flat. The company calls the file an "unconfirmed and slanderous document".

Martin Danko, a spokesman, added: "We reject that our representatives were offering any illegal incentives." He added: "The facts that the files contain are untrue."

Although the full contents of the file have not yet been confirmed, Daniel Lipsic, interior minister, has said the intelligence agency did carry out a wiretapping operation named Gorilla.

"I can confirm that serious suspicions of corrupt behaviour by a certain financial group as well as other persons were registered in terms of intelligence gathering back in 2005-06," he told the Slovak press.

Tom Nicholson, a local journalist, said he was given the file several years ago and handed it over to police, who conducted a desultory investigation.

"The file implies a multiyear history of corruption deals around utilities privatisation," said Mr Nicholson, who is writing a book on the subject. The book has been subjected to a court injunction at Penta's request.

Slovakia's small business and political elites are closely entwined - with the result that almost every government since independence in 1993 has been tainted with allegations of corruption. Slovakia is ranked 66th in the most recent corruption perceptions index by Transparency International, the watchdog group, significantly worse than its neighbours.

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