LABOUR Minister Ján Richter will face a no-confidence vote, initiated by the opposition, on October 30, Speaker of Parliament Pavol Paška said.
The motion was signed by 36 MPs who criticise Richter for various cases, the SITA newswire reported.
One of them concerns the Star EU, a company that has been extraordinarily successful in public procurements, winning 70 out of 70 bids that it applied for. The attention to this case was drawn by a study written by Ivan Kuhn from the non-governmental think tank Conservative Institute of M. R. Štefánik, who also serves as a municipal politician in the town of Rožňava and the deputy chairman of the non-parliamentary Civic Conservative Party (OKS).
In May 2014, Kuhn reported on the peculiar way in which Star EU has won dozens of tenders in municipalities around Slovakia, mostly in those with mayors nominated by the ruling Smer party. In the study, he charges that back in 2008, Star EU, a Slovak subsidiary of the Czech-based Star company, which specialises in advisory services for drawing EU funds, was recommended to mayors nominated by the ruling Smer party and by Smer politicians, and that the company has won all of the tenders it has been identified as having applied for.
Other reasons include a subsidy at €23,000 provided to the executor’s office led by Rudolf Krutý for creating four jobs for unemployed young people. Before he became the head of the office, he worked in a non-banking company Pohotovosť, SITA wrote.
Paška originally said the discussion over dismissing Richter will take place at night, but later changed his mind and moved the session to 14:00, the TASR newswire wrote.
Source: SITA, TASR
Compiled by Radka Minarechová from press reports
The Slovak Spectator cannot vouch for the accuracy of the information presented in its Flash News postings.
