Corruption and cronyism! These were the topics of MP Igor Matovic’s statement at the Attorney General’s office on Friday, when he spoke to the parliamentary elected candidate of the coalition for the Attorney General post, Jozef Centes.
Ironically, now Centes himself has come under suspicion as the initial testimony given by Matovic was accidentally shredded and also deleted from the computer. Matovic’s statement concerned corruption in political parties, with most of his information concerning the coalition, as he is part of it (at least for the moment).
So Centes was elected by the parties that are now being put under the microscope by Matovic, and suddenly the testimony was destroyed? This doesn’t sound good, and so the Attorney General’s Office itself has attacked Centes saying he gave the order to have it destroyed.
Centes says he had it deleted from the computer because it was not his PC and that the written copy was accidentally shredded by the clerks along with his notes. The office denies this, saying they had not come into contact with the papers and that someone else did the shredding.
Matovic had to give his statement and answer all the questions again, and both Centes and Matovic confirmed that the two statements were basically identical. This opens the door to speculations that maybe Matovic overdid it in his first statement or said something that would have massive implications, and that the second statement was just different enough.
Standard practice at the AG Office is to have all statements recorded in a database, but office spokeswoman Jana Tokolyova says that in this case Centes had told the clerk not to put it into any database. Even though it could very well all have been an innocent mistake, we can be sure that it will be exploited in the ongoing battle for the AG Office. Maybe Matovic has set off a forest fire while merely playing with matches. The plot thickens.