More than a year after Slovak investigative reporter Ján Kuciak and his fiancee were assassinated in their home, one of the country’s richest men has been charged with ordering their murders. The allegations against Marian Kočner, who has been jailed since June in connection with financial crimes — some of which Kuciak had investigated and written about — were announced on Thursday, Mar. 14 at a news conference near Bratislava. The indictment caps a year-long probe into the murders, which Kuciak’s colleagues and the public have long suspected were connected to his coverage of corruption and organized crime in Slovakia....
Investigations
The Cocaine Cowboys
In a nondescript shopping mall in the industrial outskirts of Venice, a major new European drug route is taking shape. Antonino Vadalà, a hot-headed man who dominates the room, sizes up his potential partner, a local businessman he hopes will help him import hundreds of kilos of cocaine into northern Italy and Slovakia. The plan is to use legal goods to disguise the drug shipments. “We load bananas, cereal, nuts, we load some bullshit,” Vadalà says. “We ship it to your company … and we pay off customs. We clear it with them when [the container] arrives.” Vadalà, 44, a...
The Murder
The offer was straightforward and financially attractive: Kill a man in return for 50,000 euros in cash and the forgiveness of more than 20,000 euros in debt. Zoltán Andruskó, a Slovak pizzeria operator, quickly accepted – a decision that forever changed both his life and the history of Slovakia. The woman Andruskó said offered the deal was Alena Zsuzsová, an Italian translator and fixer who worked for one of Slovakia’s richest men, Marián Kočner. Sitting together in a car outside her house, Zsuzsová gave Andruskó the details: a name, a couple of photos, and a home address. It was all...
How the Mafias Came to Slovakia
The Balkan mafias were the first major crime syndicates to come to Slovakia, following people from the region who had been invited to work and study there during the communist era. As their businesses spread across their new homeland, so did their influence, which they used to dominate the only organized criminal industries possible under the communist regime: prostitution, gambling, and illegal currency exchanges. When Slovakia gained its independence in 1993, the organized crime syndicates remained and flourished. Soon enough, the Italian mafia joined the former Yugoslavs and the Albanians. Today — though known for its relatively painless transition from...
The Implant Files
The Implant Files is a global investigation that tracks the harm caused by medical devices that have been tested inadequately or not at all. Led by editors and reporters from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, it took a year to plan and another year to complete. ICIJ partnered with more than 250 journalists in 36 countries, including investigace.cz, to examine how devices are tested, approved, marketed and monitored. Anchoring the probe is an analysis of more than 8 million device-related health records, including death and injury reports and recalls. Millions of people’s lives have been saved, extended or made better...
Going Bananas: Flanders Transformed into Hub for International Cocaine Trafficking
When he was murdered by an unknown assassin earlier this year, Slovak journalist Jan Kuciak was part of an international team looking into foreign drug smugglers suspected of laundering money in his country. In the wake of his death, the team has continued reporting, uncovering more about the criminal group and how it operated. The investigation reveals an international ring of drug traffickers with ties to the Italian mafia. Based in Belgium, with operations in the Netherlands, it could count on suppliers from Costa Rica and Colombia and secret large caches of cocaine in fruit shipments from Latin America to...