If the police inspectorate didn't eavesdrop on NAKA investigators, who did? Suspicion points to the SIS
The officer at the police inspectorate responsible for wiretaps was filmed confirming that his team was not involved, Dennik N reports. The eavesdropping itself may have been illegal.
A video featuring Martin Littera, the former director of wiretapping at the police inspectorate, reveals that surveillance of National Crime Agency (NAKA) investigators, including Ján Čurilla, may have been illegal, the Denník N reports. The revelation is incendiary as the wiretaps have been used extensively by the current prime minister, Robert Fico (Smer), to smear NAKA officers investigating alleged crimes committed by the Smer party's nominees during its previous periods in government. Fico has never explained where he got the tapes.
Suspicions arose about a year ago, and now the Denník N daily has obtained a recording that could serve as evidence. The recording reveals that the devices used to eavesdrop on Ján Čurilla and his team between May and July 2021 did not belong to the police inspectorate (also known as the 'police inspection').
The police inspection is a sort of internal affairs unit within the Interior Ministry that in theory should investigate wrongdoing within the police force, but which during 2020-23, when Smer was out of office, acted mainly to block probes into Smer-linked political corruption in what later became known as the 'war in the police'.
That war has effectively been won by Fico and his supporters: the current government has abolished NAKA; Čurilla and his former colleagues are now being prosecuted for alleged wrongdoing; and charges against almost all the Smer-adjacent indictees have been dropped by prosecutors or nullified by reduced statutes of limitation introduced by sweeping changes to the Penal Code passed by the government earlier this year.
In the three-hour video obtained by Denník N, which appears to be an internal interview conducted prior to him undertaking a lie-detector test, Littera can be heard rejecting any notion that his department could have placed the devices used to eavesdrop on Ján Čurilla and his team, and confirming that the devices did not belong to the inspection. His deputy, Martina Holosová, who also took a lie detector test, supported his claims.
Who was eavesdropping on the NAKA investigators?
Authors: Veronika Prušová, Martina Koník (Denník N)
"It definitely wasn’t us. But it was someone cooperating with us. The devices simply weren’t ours." said Littera, when asked on tape.
"These words could be key evidence in the police conflict and in the case of the indicted NAKA investigators surrounding Ján Čurilla," says Veronika Prušová, a Denník N reporter who appears on-screen to provide contextual commentary in the video (above) posted by the daily.
Recordings that Fico used in a manipulated form
The police inspection received approval for the wiretapping from the Bratislava III District Court. If someone else actually conducted the surveillance, that could be illegal, rendering any evidence collected unlawful.
Martin Littera was sent for a lie detector test by former inspection director Peter Juhás during the investigation into the leaking of recordings from NAKA’s offices.
These recordings were repeatedly used, often in a deceptively edited form, by the Smer party during press conferences held by Robert Fico and others to attack Ján Čurilla and his colleagues. The aim was to undermine the criminal investigations being led by NAKA into Smer members and nominees.
At the time of the wiretapping, between May and July 2021, Littera was deputy director of the wiretapping department under Ľubomír Jančovič, who died in 2022. In the video, Littera mentions realising that the inspection lacked the equipment for monitoring four offices simultaneously, despite needing to claim otherwise to obtain court approval.
Suspicion falls on the Slovak Intelligence Service (SIS) spy agency
"The SIS had an interest in discrediting the investigators and questioning their work. This interest intensified after NAKA charged former SIS director Vladimír Pčolinský in March 2021. This triggered what has been called the 'war in the police,' leading to the indictment of Čurilla and his colleagues in September 2021," Veronika Prušová states in the video.
The suspicions regarding the SIS are related to the type of devices used for eavesdropping on NAKA’s offices. "They recorded in five-minute segments, and this type of device is typically used by the intelligence services," the Denník N daily reported.
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