Imrecze was in custody, however he was preparing for his first interrogation at the police station
Both wiretaps and witnesses confirm the preparation. However, it is important for the integrity of the case whether the police themselves were involved. The Inspectorate is still verifying this.
In the charges against the three former investigators of the National Criminal Agency (NAKA), the Bureau of the Inspection Service also mentions the suspicion that the so-called technical files were also used to "prepare persons for interrogation in other criminal proceedings". In the charges, the Inspectorate says that this happened at least in the Mýtnik (Toll Collector) case. It concerns allegations of corruption and allegedly overpriced purchases of tax information systems under the previous Smer governments.
According to the Police Inspectorate, the technical files were used to allow NAKA investigators to make a test interrogation of witnesses, especially the cooperating ones, to conceal their statements from defence lawyers and to adapt official interrogations to them. When these repenting witnesses later testified in regular criminal trials, neither the accused nor their defence lawyers knew that these were not their first interrogations, and therefore could not even ask about possible discrepancies.
In the Mýtnik case, however, the Inspectorate’s findings went even further.
In 2021, NAKA took František Imrecze, former president of the Financial Administration, from custody following a request to testify regarding the technical file. In fact, he didn't testify to it.
However, he stayed in the NAKA building preparing for four hours for his first official penitential interrogation in the Mýtnik case, which was the following day. He arrived there with written notes, to which he adhered, and at the end of the notes there was a sentence about him being tired and asking for the interrogation to be interrupted – and that is what happened.
This preparation was arranged by Monika Barčáková, the Mýtnik case investigator. This is confirmed by witnesses as well as by the record of the wiretapping of the NAKA offices carried out in 2021 by the Inspectorate with the approval of the court.
The Inspectorate is still investigating whether she herself was involved in the preparation of F. Imrecze.
Official record still missing
M. Barčáková was confronted with this suspicion in February during her interrogation at the Specialized Criminal Court. Based on the wiretap, she was asked this by the defence attorneys of businessman Jozef Brhel Sr., who is charged in the Mýtnik case along with his son.
"No, I'm not aware of meeting him that week," she replied. She did not recall the incident even after her defence attorneys restated the details of the wiretaps.
It is necessary to be able to trace back who did what and when with the accused in custody. Indeed, international human rights standards (here or here) require that the conditions of detention and the treatment of a particular accused be made reviewable. This is to prevent coercion, torture or other inhumane treatment.
However, the Inspectorate has not yet found any official document that would explain what happened to F. Imrecze on the day when he was supposed to give a test statement, but he did not testify and instead was prepared for a real interrogation in the NAKA building – for the time being, it relies only on testimonies and wiretaps.
Yet the former president of the Financial Administration testified in a technical file – two days before his preparation at NAKA. Under sharp questioning, he repeated the testimony from the technical file with a few differences. These can be attributed to a different level of concentration that day or to distraction.
However, the problem is that, given all the known circumstances, the differences can also be explained by the fact that during his four-hour preparation at NAKA he agreed on the tactics and the content of his statement with the police in advance.
In the past, he has stated that no one induced him to do anything.
The Specialised Criminal Court will decide whether this event undermines the integrity of his testimony. The hearing is scheduled for September.
Angry NAKA director
Two cooperating witnesses are key in the Mýtnik case. Besides F. Imrecze, it is his former close friend Michal Suchoba, an information and communication technology entrepreneur. He testified in Technical File No. 80.
He was not questioned in the official Police Department building but in an unmarked house of the Interior Ministry on the outskirts of the capital. He denied the authenticity of the minutes seized by the Inspectorate in the technical file. It was in connection with File No. 80 that the prosecutor accused former NAKA investigators Pavol Ďurka, Ján Čurilla and Ľubomír Daňko, and prosecutor Michal Šúrek.
F. Imrecze testified in another technical file. This Technical File No. 154 was opened by Ľ. Daňko. No one has been charged in connection with this case thus far.
The former president of the Financial Administration testified in it repeatedly in 2021 and 2022 after he began cooperating with law enforcement authorities. His first two statements found in this file are from 8 June and 9 June 2021. However, no statement from him was found in Technical File No. 154, dated 10 June 2021, even though he had been taken out of prison by National Crime Agency officers to testify in this file.
The request for his extradition was signed by the then NAKA investigator Ľ. Daňko. "In the criminal case filed (...) under No. [154], I ask you to extradite F. Imrecze outside the Institute for the Execution of Detention on 8, 9 and 10 June 2021 for the purpose of carrying out procedural acts with the named person," he wrote.
These days were Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. On Friday, 11 June, the official interrogation of F. Imrecze for the regular file on the Mýtnik case was held unexpectedly. It was an important moment in the investigation because it was his first ever repentant statement – until then he had denied any criminal activity.
What happened to F. Imrecze the day before? NAKA officers picked him up from Bratislava prison as if he were going to testify in Technical File No. 154 and took him to the police building on Račianska ulica Street in Bratislava.
What happened next is probably best described by the recording of a debate with Ľ. Daňko and the operative Branislav Dunček from the wiretapping of the offices of Ján Čurilla, the investigator.
"We've scheduled the interrogation for Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Jaro has arrived from the east because of that. Well, and she... (...) She basically cancelled them brutally," says Ľubomír Daňko, upset that the interrogation for Technical File No. 154 was thwarted by the Mýtnik case investigator M. Barčáková. "So they returned back to the east, they came here for nothing. And that's not how it should be done," he says.
"My cause is of more importance."
Also other evidence confirms that F. Imrecze was suddenly taken over by this investigator in the NAKA building. Jaroslav Vereščák, a former investigator of the Eastern Slovakia NAKA, confirmed this to the Inspectorate, who had questioned him two days prior in the technical file. It is the "Jaro" who was mentioned by Ľ. Daňko in the recording.
"On the third day (10 June 2021), when I was scheduled to interrogate F. Imrecze, Mrs. Barčáková came to the interrogation room before him and told me, I don't remember the exact words, but something like, you can go home, I'm taking it today because my case is more important," he testified.
"After Mrs. Barčáková took it over, my colleague and I left angrily for the east; after all we had travelled five hundred kilometres and were not staying in Bratislava for another day for nothing; we could have been told this earlier. So I told myself that nobody would make a fool of me and I haven't interrogated anybody else into this file," he added.
The recording and the testimony of J. Vereščák confirm that the investigator was in contact with F. Imrecze before his first repentant interrogation. However, she herself did not recall this when she was questioned in court in February and therefore did not comment on it.
Kindness or preparation by the police?
But what happened next? J. Vereščák recalls that M. Barčáková told him that she was taking the witness because "she needed to interrogate him". However, there is no interrogation of F. Imrecze from 10 June in the regular file on the Mýtnik case. Only the interrogation from the following day, 11 June 2021 is in the file. This was his first ever repentant interrogation in this case.
The Inspectorate therefore also checked other investigation files assigned to M. Barčáková at that time to see if they could find a record of the interrogation of this witness, but thus far they have not found any from 10 June.
The wiretap recording, however, offers a different explanation of what happened in the NAKA building with F. Imrecze.
"She came and cancelled them, saying that she was going to prepare for her case and that they weren't going to interrogate him. You know, so she could have told him to get ready for the next day to be interrogated about this and that, and he could continue his testimony," says Ľ. Daňko in the recording.
This statement can be interpreted in different ways. One possible explanation is that, in his opinion, there was not sufficient reason for anyone to cancel the interrogation of F. Imrecze in Technical File No. 154; instead, the investigator should have told F. Imrecze in advance what his first repentant statement in the Mýtnik case would be about, so that he could prepare for it after his interrogation in the Technical File.
Yet it would not be okay for the investigator to informally agree with the witness regarding what and when to testify.
However, the wiretapping continued and raises a key question about the integrity of the prosecution in the Mýtnik case – whether the investigator herself was involved in preparing the witness for interrogation or whether it was just a favour to give him an undisturbed space to meet with his defence attorney outside the prison. Even this could be a problem in itself, but less serious than the preparation of a witness for interrogation directly by the investigating officer.
The next part of the wiretap does not dispel these doubts. Ľ. Daňko said about the thwarted interrogation of F. Imrecze in the technical file by the Mýtnik case investigator that "she did not interrogate (yesterday) at all, (she did it) only to interrogate him today".
But what happened to F. Imrecze at NAKA "only to interrogate him today"?
The operative Branislav Dunček was also in the room and offered his own interpretation of the event: "She, she... I know, that because of the case, he went today, it was done hastily, today's interrogation, he was going to give real testimony in front of the defence attorneys, and that's why she wanted to take him yesterday, to (word unspoken) with him because of today's interrogation. This is the important thing. This interrogation is important. (...) Yesterday Fero was sitting here for four hours with his defence lawyer and they were discussing what to do today," he said.
The wiretap also recorded F. Imrecze's discussion with the operatives on the evening of 11 June 2021, after the end of the first repentant interrogation. In the recording they talk about the day before – that is about the preparation for this interrogation, however this recording does not clarify what happened to him at NAKA, because this information does not appear: "We were surprised by today's term. So we actually had to... yesterday," F. Imrecze doesn't finish his sentence. "Yes, yes, yes, yes...," the policeman interjects. They then speak no more about the subject.
The whole situation could be quickly clarified if the Police Inspectorate in 2021 also wiretapped a room on another floor of the NAKA building in Bratislava, where M. Barčáková talked to F. Imrecze and his defence lawyer. However, it is still unclear whether this actually happened.
Only recordings from four offices of NAKA investigators and operatives are known. At the same time, we know that the then District Court Bratislava III also issued fifteen other wiretapping warrants in connection with this case. It is not known what the Inspectorate recorded on the basis of them.
Imrecze's explanation is different
The Inspectorate has already interviewed F. Imrecze and claims that the investigator only created space for him to prepare with the defence attorney so that he would not have to return to prison.
But he describes the whole event a little differently. His description does not correspond with the wiretaps, the interrogation of Police Officer J. Vereščák or the statements of another police officer whom F. Imrecze names in his statement.
The former president of the Financial Administration confirmed that NAKA officers came to the prison for him also on Thursday, 10 June 2021. He expected to continue with his interrogation in Technical File No. 154.
"However, that didn't happen. If I remember it correctly, on that day I had an interrogation with Investigator (Tomáš) Emmel about Peter Žiga, the current MP and his company Taper in connection with VAT fraud suspicions," he said to the Inspectorate. He even added that T. Emmel supposedly briefed him on the subject of this alleged interrogation.
F. Imrecze claims that it was only afterwards that the Mýtnik case investigator M. Barčáková "found" him and his defence attorney Miroslav Ivanovič. "She informed us that the on next day I was to be interrogated for the Mýtnik case. M. Ivanovič and I didn't expect it and we told M. Barčáková that we had to prepare for it. She said she understood and offered that we could prepare at NAKA and I didn't need to return to custody to prepare. I welcomed it," he said.
She didn't remember even based on the wiretap recording
In the wiretap recording, Ľ. Daňko does not mention that his interrogation in Technical File No. 154 was thwarted by investigator Tomáš Emmel. Neither did the then investigator Jaroslav Vereščák, who had interrogated F. Imrecze two days earlier in the technical file, recall anything of the kind during his testimony at the Inspectorate.
And Tomáš Emmel directly described it as a lie.
"I know F. Imrecze from the media only, I have never done any thing with him. Moreover, the investigation file on Taper was withdrawn from me on 21 August 2019, which can be easily verified, so I could hardly have interrogated Mr Imrecze about it two years later on 10 June 2021," he said in response to journalists' questions about Mr. Imrecze's testimony. He wishes to consult his lawyers to determine whether his statements do not constitute the offence of perjury and, if so, to contact law enforcement authorities.
M. Barčáková's interpretation is not known, because she did not recall the incident even based on the content of the recording. "I am simply not aware of any such act, or I do not remember it," she responded in February at the Specialized Criminal Court.
Ján Hrubala, the chair of the tribunal, recorded her statements more explicitly in the minutes in February: "Even after being informed by the defence attorney about what should have been the content of the conversation with Ľ. Daňko, I cannot recall in my memory spending four hours with some Fero the day before the interrogation." However, M. Barčáková did not object to such transcript, although the judge asked her whether there was anything she would like to add to it.
Ľ. Daňko responded to journalists' questions about the events of 10 June 2021 before he was charged in connection with Technical File No. 80. "The Bureau of the Inspection Service is pursuing a criminal investigation into the matter and since I have not been interrogated on the matter, I will not comment on the issues so as not to frustrate the investigation," he said.
Salary compensation left out
F. Imrecze's testimony in Technical File No. 154, dated 8 and 9 June, is substantially identical to his first repentant testimony in the regular the Mýtnik case file dated 11 June 2021. Thus, in this particular case, it refutes the defence’s argument for the accused police officers that the technical files were created because the penitents were testifying about various criminal activities and it would not be appropriate for them to testify for the first time on the record in front of defence attorneys.
However, there are differences between F. Imrecze's statements which can be attributed not only to the concentration of his mind and the witness's mood of the moment or the function of his memory, but also to tactics.
For example, in his statement of 8 June 2021 in the technical file, F. Imrecze chronologically described his joining the financial administration and mentioned that he had also discussed his salary. As he was coming from a well paid position in the private sector, he allegedly concluded an agreement with businessman Jozef Brhel Sr. to compensate the salary of the president of the Financial Administration to the level of the previous salary. It seems natural that F. Imrecze mentions this in the technical file when describing the beginning of his career as a public official, since salary is usually discussed before taking up the job.
In the first for the record repentant interrogation of 11 June 2021, he describes the beginning of his career in the same way as in the technical file, even some of the statements coincide word for word, and even the sentence structure is the same, but he left out the alleged salary compensation – he did not officially testify about it until two weeks later at the second regular interrogation in the Mýtnik case on 25 June 2021.
As the defendants' attorneys did not know that he had previously testified in Technical File No. 154, they could not confront him with questions about why he had not mention this information about the beginning of his career during regular interrogation.
A similar difference can be found in the testimony of F. Imrecze about the alleged bribe to the architect Miroslav Slahučka for the processing of a budget measure at the Ministry of Finance, which was supposed to ensure the financing of the purchase of an information system from Allexis, the company of Michal Suchoba. In the technical file, F. Imrecze testified in detail about the alleged handing over of the money and also described the structure of M. Slahučka's house. In his testimony before the defence attorneys, he did not mention the information so naturally. He mentioned the alleged corruption of M. Slahučka on 11 June, but only added a description of his house during the later official questioning.
They wanted to investigate integrity, but it's been six months since them
In the second repentant interrogation of 25 June 2021, in addition to the alleged bribe to M. Slahučka, he also added that when he received this request, he went to Jozef Brhel Sr., into his office at the Hilton Hotel to discover whether M. Slahučka had any say in the handling of information systems at the Financial Administration. He did not mention anything about this in the technical file.
Even in this case, no one could have asked about these discrepancies, as no one except the police officers knew that any technical file existed at all.
The questioning of F. Imrecze for the technical file on Tuesday, 8 June, lasted over five hours, and on Wednesday, 9 June 2021, nearly six hours. However, the official interrogation of 11 June 2021 lasted less than three hours – in fact, F. Imrecze stuck to his pre-prepared notes and said that he was tired and would continue on another date.
It is not yet clear what, if anything, the Police Inspectorate or the court will do with these suspicions and what impact they will have on further prosecution in the Mýtnik case.
The defence of J. Brhel has been systematically drawing attention to the suspicion of witness preparation by the police since the beginning of this year.
During the last hearing in February, it seemed that the Specialized Criminal Court panel consisting of the presiding judge Ján Hrubala, and the member judges Ján Giertli and Rastislav Stieranka, were interested in examining the integrity of this criminal proceeding. That is why the Mýtnik case investigator herself was interrogated. However, the case has not been heard since then. The next date is scheduled for September.