Finance minister Ivan Miklos has drawn attention to the excessive money-wasting that went on in national lottery company Tipos under the previous government of Robert Fico.
Tipos dished out around EUR 2 million in the space of three years to ice-hockey team Slovan alone, while also extending its generosity to concert organisers for concerts by the likes of Lenny Kravitz, Alicia Keys, Backstreet Boys, Depeche Mode and Kiss.
Shortly after taking up his post as finance minister, Miklos sacked the management of Tipos, just in time to stop another EUR 320,000 plus in contracts from being signed. Most of the ‘free-money’ contracts to date were signed with the agencies XL promotion and Kuul media.
He says the company was being bled dry in the past four years of the Fico government. All that his predecessor Jan Pociatek had to say in response was that Tipos had produced its best ever results while he was finance minister.