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...
Nová homepage
Hitman, Drug Dealers and Vadala Family. Welcome to the High Tatras
The town of Poprad – a gateway to the region of the High Tatras in northern Slovakia – has been attracting the Italian underworld for many years. In March 2017 we went with Ján Kuciak to the most popular Slovak mountains to find out what lied behind. We started our investigation into the Italian organized crime in Slovakia from scratch. In the beginning, we met with Italian and Czech experts on criminal activities and they told us that they knew nothing about Italian organized crime groups in Slovakia. However, thanks to our own research, we found an exception – Poprad...
OCCRP: Slovak Police Must Return Reporter’s Seized Phone Immediately
Yesterday, Slovakia’s National Crime Agency seized a mobile phone belonging to investigative reporter Pavla Holcova from investigace.cz. Slovak police invited Pavla for an interview for what we believed was a friendly meeting to aid the investigation into the murder of Jan Kuciak. Yet they had already obtained a prosecutor’s order to seize the phone implying this was their intention when they lured Pavla to the meeting. Pavla had been working with Jan on behalf of OCCRP when he was murdered. She had previously helped police by telling them what she knew. Jan was her friend and Pavla was motivated to find...
Man of revolution
Jan Kuciak made a revolution in my life 8 years ago when we met at the university. He was my friend, schoolmate, colleague, mentor, beer buddy, psychologist, philosopher, and an irreplaceable person in my life. All these sides of Janko have been spread across Slovakia and every single face during protests in the squares reflects one of them. 26th February 2018 stopped the casual time flow in Slovakia. The whole country was shocked by the news of the death of journalist Ján Kuciak and archaeologist Martina Kušnírová. The official statement hit thousands of people even more. The police president Tibor Gašpar...
You cannot kill the story
When Marek Vagovič, the editor of Jano Kuciak from his news portal Aktuality, called me at 8 AM on Monday morning, I had no idea how his message was going to turn my upcoming days upside down. He asked me to sit down and explained me that Jano and his fiancée Martina were brutally murdered at their home in Slovak village of Velka Mača. He told me it was the work of professional – one bullet to Jano´s chest, one bullet to Martina´s head. And as I am the one who worked closely with him on his last big investigation,...
Freedom of Information Law: Reporter’s Best Friend or Killer?
As soon as journalists published the last investigation of their murdered colleague, Slovak reporter Jan Kuciak, they immediately focused on another important issue: Why was he killed? And how did his killers know that he was working on a story about them? The first answer was straightforward. Kuciak and his fiancée were murdered in their home in late February by one or more professional hitmen. Police and his colleagues believe that this can only be because of a story he was working on or had worked on. Journalists and police have a number of suspects, and the investigation is ongoing. The second...