Two years after the murder: Corrupted judges and Kočner getting used to imprisonment (chronology)
22.2.2020 11:16
akt. 09.02.2021 05:23

Two years after the murder: Corrupted judges and Kočner getting used to imprisonment (chronology)

Zdroj: Branislav Wáclav/Aktuality.sk
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The state system has shaken in its foundations, protests have gradually faded out, the main defendants have been in custody for over a year and were brought to court in January.

Two years after the murder of Ján and Martina it was revealed, how oligarchs and mobsters influenced politicians, judges and prosecutors.

Read a selective chronology of the most important events after the murder of Ján Kuciak and Martina Kušnírová, which has changed Slovakia.

February 2018

February 5: The accused of the murder of Ján Kuciak and Martina Kušnírová first came to check out the house in Veľká Mača, where the couple lived. The murderers carried out six more inspections of Kuciak's house and the access roads.

"Initial plan was to kidnap Mr. Kuciak and murdered him later in a way that nobody would find his body," Marček testified in court in January 2020. He confessed to the murder before the senate.

February 21: Ján Kuciak and Martina Kušnírová were murdered in the evening. “I knocked, Mr. Kuciak opened the door. Then, unfortunately, I saw another person. I ran after her to the kitchen and shot her dead,” Marček described in court in early January 2020.

Martina Kušnírová was killed by a shot in the head, Ján Kuciak with two shots in the chest.

After the shooting, the assassin came out of the house and walked past several other houses across the street towards the football pitch, where he was picked up by his driver and driven to the town of Komárno.

February 26: Police confirmed the finding of John and Martina's bodies in their house in Veľká Mača. Police President Tibor Gašpar said Kuciak's work was the most likely motive of the murder.

February 27: Prime Minister Róbert Fico stood in front of journalists with a million Euros on the table. It was meant as a reward for obtaining information about the murderers of Ján Kuciak and Martina Kušnírová. In June 2018, Minister of Education Martina Lubyová admitted that the million Euros had never been paid out. Current Deputy PM Richard Raši on the other hand tried to deny responsibility by claiming that it was a commitment of the previous government of Róbert Fico.

February 28: The last, unfinished article by Ján Kuciak was published by Slovak and international daily newspapers and news websites. In it he revealed the connection of Calabria Mafia ‘Ndrangheta to Italians living in the eastern Slovakia, Maria Trošková, Viliam Jasaň and Róbert Fico.

Viliam Jasaň and Mária Trošková announced that they were temporarily leaving the Government Office. In fact, they did not leave until a month later, after the fall of Fico’s government.

March 2018

March 2: About 20,000 people marched in the streets to commemorate the legacy of Ján and Martina. In the village of Gregorovce near Prešov Martina Kušnírová was buried.

March 3: Ján Kuciak's funeral took place a day later in the village of Štiavnik.

March 9: Slovakia witnessed the biggest protests since 1989. Around 120,000 people took to the streets in Slovakia and abroad. There were about 60,000 protesters in Bratislava alone. The protests lasted for several weeks but gradually faded out and their organizers split up.

March 13: The police arrested Antonino Vadala during an international operation. In October 2019 the Italian businessman was finally sentenced by the Italian court for drug trafficking to nine years in prison. This is only a first instance sentence.

March 14: Prime Minister Fico offered his resignation to President Kiska under three conditions.

March 22: President Kiska appointed Peter Pellegrini as new Prime Minister. Ministries of Interior, Justice, Culture and Health changed their leadership as well.

April 2018

April 16: After two weeks, new Interior Minister Tomáš Drucker resigned, after failing to remove police President Tibor Gašpar from office. Drucker was replaced by Smer-SD nominee Denisa Saková. One day later, Gašpar finally resigned from his office.

May 2018

May 5: On the day when the wedding of Ján and Martina was planned, a commemorative event took place in the village of Gregorovce and a concert was held at the local football pitch. “I have very mixed feelings. Today we were supposed to be at the wedding, instead we are here,” said Jozef Kuciak, the father of the murdered journalist.

May 15: Slovak police confiscated the mobile phone of Kuciak's collaborator, journalist Pavla Holcová. The investigative reporter worked on sensitive international cases, including the Italians. The police action caused international outrage.

May 29: Police reconstructed the murder of Ján and Martina in Veľká Mača.

May 30: Ján Kuciak became one of the first recipients of the Prize for Journalists, Informants and Advocates of the Right to Information. He was honored in the European Parliament for his efforts to investigate tax fraud and to seek links between businessmen and influential Slovak politicians.

July 2018

July 11: Chair of Law Monitoring Group for Legal State complained in European Parliament about the lack of progress in the investigation process. “We are concerned that nothing has been investigated so far in Malta or Slovakia. We don't see any results,” she told the media.

August 2018

August 16: Former Police President Tibor Gašpar became new advisor to Minister of the Interior Denisa Saková. He was supposed to help reducing crime committed by the Roma community. Six months later he left his post but still works as an advisor to the Czech Interior Minister Jan Hamáček.

August 17: Former NAKA (National Crime Agency) chief Robert Krajmer was supposed to start working at the Interior Ministry from September 2018. Ján Kuciak also wrote about Krajmer and his wife. Krajmer visited the scene of the murder, although he had nothing to do there.

September 2018

September 27: The elite police unit conducted an extraordinary intervention in the town of Kolárovo, detaining suspects in the murders of Ján Kuciak and Martina Kušnírová. Among them was former policeman Tomáš Szabó, who was supposed to be the murderer.

The second detained was his cousin Miroslav Marček, who was thought to be the driver of the murderer. The third one was entrepreneur Zoltán Andruskó.

September 28: The police arrested Alena Zsuzsová in a family house in the city of Komárno.

October 2018

October 4: It was reviled that the gang from the southern Slovakia was also planning to murder the first deputy attorney general Peter Šufliarsky. Alena Zsuzsová and Zoltán Andruskó should be the mediators, Szabó and Marček would be the performers.

October 15: Police President Milan Lučanský intervened in a team investigating the murder of Ján Kuciak. He recalled the head of NAKA Peter Hraško from the investigation. Hraško was a member of the control group in the investigative team.

October 16: Police conducted house searches in the homes of entrepreneur Marian Kočner.

The elite Lynx Commando and NAKA members searched Kočner's properties in Bernolákovo, Donovaly and Bratislava – including the Five Star Residence and Bonaparte complexes. The raid was related to the murder of Ján Kuciak as Kočner was mentioned in the testimonies as one of the possible ordering parties.

October 22: Denník N daily reported that former SIS (Slovak secret police) agent Peter Tóth had confessed to surveillance of Ján Kuciak and other journalists.

Among them was the head of the investigative team at Aktuality.sk and Ján Kuciak’s superior Marek Vagovič and commentator Dag Daniš.

November 2018

November 8: The name Alena Zsuzsová began to be mentioned in connection with the murder of ex mayor of the city of Hurbanovo and later the city controller Laszló Basternák, as well as in the case of the murder of local MP from the town of Žiar nad Hronom – young lawyer Marek Rakovský.

The young man’s car exploded while he was driving in 2013. Rakovský was supposed to get involved in the Euro subsidies fraud in the Social Implementation Agency, which is under administration of the Ministry of Labor.

November 19: A book entitled The Silenced: An Authentic Story of Ján Kuciak and Martina Kušnírová was published. Journalists under the lead of Marek Vagovič, chief investigator at Aktuality.sk, took part in writing the book.

The story of Ján and Martina is put together from interviews with families, close friends and colleagues of the murdered couple.

November 29: Police President Milan Lučanský confirmed for Radio Express that the police were investigating Marian Kočner as a possible ordering party of the murder of Ján and Martina.

December 2018

December 11: Time magazine included Ján Kuciak, investigative journalist of Aktuality.sk website, in their list of personalities of 2018.

December 13: The police planned to detain the son of the Bonul security agency Norbert Bödör in connection with the murder of Ján and Martina. However, he learned about it beforehand and reported to the police himself.

January 2019

January 8: President Andrej Kiska awarded thirty personalities on the occasion of the 26th anniversary of the establishment of the independent Slovak Republic. Among them was Ján Kuciak, who was awarded the Order of Ľudovít Štúr of I. class in memoriam.

January 8: Police officers Štefan Jombik and Jaroslav Barochovský retired from the service after more than twenty years. They handled all Kočner's cases in the businessman’s favor.

January 10: The police reduced the number of members of the Kuciak murder investigation team, due to information leaks. The police also obtained recordings of Marian Kočner. One of them was an audio recording of the Gorilla scandal; another was Kočner's interview with former Prosecutor General Dobroslav Trnka, when they talked about bribes and dealing with the Gorilla recording as well as their attempt to blackmail the boss of Penta Jaroslav Haščák.

January 15: Deputy Attorney General René Vanek lost his post when his contacts with Alena Zsuzsová became known. Bratislava Self-Governing Region’s Chairman Juraj Droba and Martin Glváč, Deputy Speaker of Parliament, also communicated with her.

February 2019

February 2: Italian TV Rai 1 released footage of Jan Kuciak's surveillance.

February 5: Interior Minister Denisa Saková intervened in the investigation of the murder of Ján Kuciak and Martina Kušnírová. Police inspection team was assigned the investigation of preparation of the murder of elite prosecutor Maroš Žilinka and attorney Daniel Lipšic.

February 21: In several cities in Slovakia, commemorative events of the anniversary of the murder of Ján Kuciak and Martina Kušnírová were held.

“The worst thing is that if they put anyone in jail, I would still have doubts. Those who ordered this were not just any regular persons, they will defend themselves and we do not know how much influence they have at the moment. I'm afraid that not all responsible will be brought to justice,” said Jozef Kuciak, brother of the murdered journalist.

March 2019

March 1: Masked police forces searched the area between Kolárovo and Dedina Mládeže. They cut down the tree at which the killer of the journalist practiced his shooting.

March 25: “I perceived Kočner as a dog that would not bite,” the boss of Penta Jaroslav Haščák said in an interview. Text messages between him and Kočner, where they wrote about "eliminating the dick”, were published by media. Haščák refused that Kuciak was the topic. He claimed they were talking about investigator Lukáš Kyselica.

April 2019

April 11: Miroslav Marček confessed to the murder of Ján Kuciak and his fiancée for the first time in front of a NAKA investigator.

May 2019

May 28: Police reconstructed the murder of Ján Kuciak and Martina Kušnírová with hitman Miroslav Marček.

July 2019

July 22: A lawsuit has begun in the case of promissory notes with Marian Kočner and Pavol Rusko. They are both charged with a fraud of 69 million Euros and obstruction of justice. This was the first trial with Kočner after a series of charges and indictments that police and prosecutors filed against him after the murder of Ján and Martina.

August 2019

August 2: Denník N daily was the first to publish Threema communication from Marian Kočner's mobile phone.

The messages show how Kočner influenced judges, how he helped Secretary of State Monika Jankovská and how he worked on surveillance of journalists with Norbert Bödör. Kočner also wrote about the murder of Ján Kuciak and the payment of the reward for it in a code language. Killing of the journalist was described as pulling out teeth.

The cell phone was handed over to the police by former Kočner’s associate and secret agent Peter Tóth. In addition, Tóth also handed in Kočner’s Kia Rio car. In it there were found documents and contracts from companies that Kočner originally claimed to have nothing to do with.

August 6: At the end of 2018, the influential businessman Norbert Bödör learned about his planned detention and came to the police to testify himself. It was related to the investigation of the murder of Ján Kuciak and Martina Kušnírová.

Zastavme korupciu (Let’s Stop the Corruption) foundation reported that very strange things were happening in connection to Bödör’s detention. The order was canceled very quickly for example. The prosecutor's office and the police did not want to comment on the circumstances.

August 14: Alena Zsuzsová, Zoltán Andruskó, Tomáš Szabó and Miroslav Marček were accused of ordering and preparing assassinations of two prosecutors Maroš Žilinka and Peter Šufliarsky, as well as of planning the murder of attorney Daniel Lipšic.

September 2019

September 19: Chief of the investment group Penta Jaroslav Haščák testified at NAKA in connection with the messages he exchanged with Marian Kočner.

September 26: The police officers who scrutinized Ján Kuciak in the police database were detained. Later they were released.

September 27: Jan Kuciak's Investigative Center informed that the son of the oligarch Norbert Bödör registered a new permanent address. He changed his address in the city of Nitra for a luxury residence in Dubai.

October 2019

October 21: The prosecutor filed a case against Kočner for murdering Ján Kuciak and Martina Kušnírová. In addition to Kočner the indicted were Alena Zsuzsová, Tomáš Szabó, and Miroslav Marček. Zoltán Andruskó was dealt with in separate proceedings.

October 22: Police President dissolved the Kuciak murder investigative team.

October 28: Aktuality.sk published the text of the indictment of Marian Kočner, Alena Zsuzsová, Tomáš Szabó and Miroslav Marček in the case of the murder of Ján Kuciak and Martina Kušnírová. At the same time, the court allowed using Threema as evidence in the case of the promissory notes of TV Markíza. The court thus officially confirmed the authenticity of the Threema communication.

December 2019

December 10: US Treasury Office puts Marian Kočner and six of his companies on a sanction list. Marian Kočner cannot trade in the United States and is also prohibited from entering the country. In addition, the Americans froze his bank accounts. Those who would trade with him and his companies will be sanctioned as well.

The Americans applied the so-called Magnitsky Act to a Slovak citizen for the very first time. This global tool is used by the US against criminals violating fundamental human rights or committing corruption.

December 19: The court agreed to charging the four accused in the case of the murder of a journalist and his fiancée. The first dates of the hearings were set for January 2020.

December 30: The first sentence in the case of the murder of Ján Kuciak and Martina Kušnírová was given. The court confirmed the agreement between the intermediate Zoltán Andruskó and the prosecutor's office. Andruskó agreed on the penalty of 15 years.

January 2020

January 13: At the Specialized Criminal Court in Pezinok, the process of the year began with the four indicted of the murder of Ján Kuciak and Martina Kušnírová.

On the first day of the trial, Miroslav Marček confessed to committing the murder and described in a cold-blooded way how he did it. Marček also pleaded guilty to the murder of entrepreneur Peter Molnár, as the court joined the two cases under one trial. The remaining three indicted denied their involvement in the murder. Marián Kočner confessed only to illicit armament.

January 14: Zoltán Andruskó testified on the second day of the closely watched process.

"I should have texted her (Alena Zsuzsová) through Threema that I got a flat tire," Andruskó told the court about a pre-agreed signal between him and Zsuzsová. He should have written this after the murder was committed.

Andruskó claims that the money Zsuzsová paid him was wrapped in a kitchen towel.

January 15: On the third day of the trial there was a major testimony of former secret police member Peter Tóth. Kočner's secret messages sent out of the prison were read as well, Tóth confirmed their authenticity.

According to Tóth, Marian Kočner had information from the investigation of the murder through Norbert Bödör and was supposed to organize his release from custody through the judge of Constitutional Court Mojmír Mamojka. Mamojka denied it.

January 20: The fourth day of the trial focused on the testimonies of Norbert Bödör and Slavomír Haščák. The son of oligarch from Nitra Bödör refused the claims that he was paying for surveillance of journalists. Peter Tóth lied according to Bödör. Jaroslav Haščák (the boss of Penta) said that he had no information about Kočner’s surveillance of journalists.

January 21: Colleagues of Ján Kuciak testified on the fifth day of the trial.

“I wrote to Ján on February 19, 2018, that if he needed to, I would have him hidden in a secret place. We were not worried about his life, but I wanted him to have the peace and quiet to write the article about Italians. We were worried that the lawyers of Italians would try to make his life uncomfortable. I also suggested that he and Martina go to Prague for several days and write the article there,” recalled Peter Bárdy, Editor-in-Chief of Aktuality.sk.

January 22: On the sixth day of the trial, the tracking squad hired by Kočner through Peter Tóth testified. They confirmed that the journalist was surveilled in front of his house in Veľká Mača. All of them denied knowing anything about preparing the murder.

February 2020

February 3: On the seventh day of the trial, the experts testified. The court dealt with explanation why two missiles ended up in one bullet pathway in the chest of Ján Kuciak. At the same time, the Senate set aside the case of the hitman Miroslav Marček (based on his confession) for a separate trial.

February 4: The court excluded the public from the trial during the eighth day, when experts from Europol and the police testified. They explained how they extracted the messages found in Kočner's mobile phones.

February 7: The media revealed that Marian Kočner had an aircraft ready to fly him to Split, Croatia, on the very day the Supreme Court ruled on his custody. According to the messages from Threema, he wanted to board a yacht that officially belonged to his wife and sail into international waters.

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