More than a year after a special prosecutor in Slovakia charged Marian Kočner with ordering murders of investigative journalist Ján Kuciak and his fianceé Martina Kušnírová. Kočner threatened Kuciak months before the murder. Despite Kuciak´s request, the police did not react. According the special prosecutor, the official motive of Kočner was Kuciak´s investigative reporting. Read...
Tag: Ján Kuciak
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...