Ex intelligence employee: Lexa oversaw the 1995 abduction

Former Slovak Intelligence Service (SIS) member, from the task force that abducted the son of then-president, revealed to Sme that the kidnapping was overseen by then-SIS head.

Ľuboš Kosík, one of the five members of the task force that abducted the son of then-president Michal Kováč in 1995, said in a statement for the Sme daily that the kidnapping was overseen personally by then-SIS director Ivan Lexa.

“Everything was overseen by Ivan Lexa,” Kosík claims in the statement. “He knew about every step made by the SIS members during the kidnapping,” he says, adding that the action was monitored from a nearby service car by former SIS deputy director Jaroslav Svěchota. Kosík claims that Lexa was giving orders from his office.

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Kosík, who in December confirmed to Sme that he was one of the task-force members, is now declaring that he wants to testify about the case, including in court. He emphasises in the statement that he is aware of the possible legal consequences. He also says he is not under the influence of narcotics or alcohol, and nobody has forced him into anything.

Kosík wants to blow whistle

Kosík has sent the statement from Mali, where he was detained in November 2016 based on an international warrant, Sme wrote on January 10. He fled Slovakia after the Supreme Court found him guilty in summer 2016 of forging promissory notes against his former business partner, Ľubomír Farenzen. He received a sentence of 14 years but since Slovakia has no agreement on legal aid with the African state, Mali has so far not answered Slovakia’s request to extradite Kosík.

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The General Prosecutor’s Office confirmed on January 9 that it has received an email form Kosík asking them to interrogate him, sent through a go-between. Kosík states that he wants to cooperate with investigators and is asking how to deliver his testimony so that it is sufficiently trustworthy and gets into the right hands, according to Sme.

Lexa does not react

Kosík claims that he decided to testify about the crimes of his former superiors in SIS after they dumped him and left him to deal on his own. Again, he names – alongside Lexa and Svěchota (who has died) – his ex-colleague Michal Hrbáček, whom he mentioned in the December 2017 interview.

Hrbáček has been accused of creating and managing the task force that stopped Michal Kováč, Jr.'s car in August 1995 and later handed him over to another group that abducted and too him to Austria.

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Lexa has not answered his phone since January 8, and while his lawyer Marek Para initially promised a stance on Kosík’s claims, he later did not react. In the past, Lexa denied all allegations of him organising the abduction.

Back in December for Sme, Hrbáček refuted Kosík’s words on his participation in the abduction.

10. Jan 2018 at 13:16 | Compiled by Spectator staff