When Ján Kuciak worked on the topic of Italian entrepreneurs in the Eastern Slovakia we knew it would be a big thing. Original main characters of the story were Robert Fico, Mária Trošková, Viliam Jasaň, Antonino Vadala and Diego Roda.

However, now it seems there are more main characters than those mentioned before. Kuciak’s story is uncovering actually how terrible is the condition Slovakia is in. And not only the Eastern part, where “there is nothing” according to Ex PM Fico.

Let’s sum up step by step what have been published since Jan and Martina’s murders:

- Italians who are doing business in the Eastern Slovakia have links to ‘Ndrangheta.

- Since 2004 they have received 68 million Euros through EU subsidies.

- Several of them were/are investigated in Italy for illegal arming, black-mailing or drug trafficking (Carmine Cinnante, Antonino Vadala, Giuseppe Tesoriere and others).

- They were investigated also at the time when they were making business in Slovakia as honorable citizens.

- One of them, Antonino Vadala, was even bragging that he has a superior relationship with custom officers and the secret police. Thanks to these contacts he could smuggle cocaine in fruit containers and they have checked them only pro forma.

- Antonino Vadala has maintained good relations with regional politicians, such as ex Member of Parliament from the party Most-Híd, with whom he wanted to build a hotel in the Croatian island of Hvar.

- Slovak authorities had information from the Italian side, that Italians residing in the Eastern Slovakia have dangerous background, but they haven’t done anything about it.

- The case fully revealed the character of Robert Fico, who decided to protect Mária Trošková and Viliam Jasaň, despite the indisputable proof of their connection to people close to the mafia.

- Robert Fico in order to save himself and his government has resorted to unsubstantiated speculation that Slovakia is facing a coup which is organized from abroad. And that during the protests violent riots may occur. Conspiracy media helped him with spreading these hoaxes.

- Nevertheless Smer is falling down.

- At the beginning Most-Híd and its leader Béla Bugár were asking for early elections but then they agreed to remain in the coalition and they don’t see anything strange about it.

- The case showed that not only the opposition is dancing on the graves of the murdered but also Robert Fico is. And he is even waving a million Euros in cash at the same time.

- The war between Robert Fico and President Andrej Kiska didn’t stop even after this tragedy. On the contrary, it became even more open and culminated with the smirk of Robert Fico, when he was handing his resignation to the President.

- We found out that Smer has a real problem to find relevant candidates for ministers and doesn’t have enough self-reflection to deal with those who should have left their offices long before Kuciak’s murder.

- The murder of Ján and Martina has shown that there are tens of thousands of people who are not indifferent to what kind of country they live in and they express in a peaceful manner their political and civic views.

- Even more pressure was put on the police president Tibor Gašpar to resign. He is a brother- in-law of oligarch Miroslav Bödör and has relations with the top politicians of Smer-SD.

- There are several connections to the Bödör family from the official places: For example, the former head of the NAKA anti-corruption unit Róbert Krajmer has a connection to Norbert Bödör

- Krajmer's wife Mária will have to explain to the General Prosecutor how she became owning her properties after her connections to oligarchs were published.

- Prosecutor Vasil Špirko also stepped out of the shadows and accused Robert Kaliňák of ordering his discreditation

- Slovak and foreign journalists have united in the work on Jan Kuciak’s topics under the brand #AllForJan. This is supposed to demonstrate the fellowship of all journalists which we are greatly thankful for.

We won’t stop

The past few weeks since the murder of Ján Kuciak and Martina Kušnirová showed that our country is facing several challenges. The first and fundamental one is the reconstruction of the system and its control mechanisms.

People with criminal links to one of the most dangerous criminal organization have been quietly running their businesses and drawing tens of millions Euros from the subsidies. This type of „business“ has become a standard here and it needs to be stopped.

The way of selecting police officials and the way how they are nominated should also change. Political influence and possible influence of interest groups on the police are reducing the police credibility.

It turned out, that Slovak politicians are considerably lacking self-reflection and respect and that their understanding of reconstruction of the government is just small cosmetic changes, or rather putting together a puppet government that is run by the ex PM (at least he is pretending that).

The good news is there are still people in this country who care about the quality of democracy in Slovakia. They are willing to fight for it, as Ján Kuciak had been doing before they killed him.

Therefore it is important to continue his work. And it is also important that the general public understands and supports the work of journalists, who are not OK with the fact that criminals, interest groups and oligarchs rule this country and profit from it.