Kazimir: Law-Enforcement Authorities to Examine Leak of Tax Data
Bratislava, September 18 (TASR) – Law-enforcement authorities will examine who anonymously published tax data concerning President Andrej Kiska, Finance Minister Peter Kazimir (Smer-SD) said following his meeting with the head of the country on Monday.
“Over the past weekend we identified, based on data from the Financial Administration’s Information System, a close group of people who had come into contact with the documents that leaked to the media last week. I informed the president on the findings this morning. We’ll advance the findings to law enforcement authorities so they can examine who anonymously published these data,” said Kazimir.”Over the past weekend we identified, based on data from the Financial Administration’s Information System, a close group of people who had come into contact with the documents that leaked to the media last week. I informed the president on the findings this morning. We’ll advance the findings to law enforcement authorities so they can examine who anonymously published these data,” said Kazimir.
Kazimir said that the Information System enables finding out names of people, dates and exact times when they came into contact with documents. “Naturally, whether they had an access to these data in order to perform their service duties or not will be a subject of investigation, too,” said Kazimir. In addition to the Financial Administration, other entities had access to the given documents, too, for example the firm that was the subject of the tax audit, as well as respective state institutions and bodies, he added.
“We concurred with the president that circumstances of this and similar cases, which always stir media attention, needn’t have an impact on the resolve of the Financial Administration’s staff to meet their duties in a responsible manner, which include performing tax audits of constitutional officials. The Financial Administration must be independent and its employees have and must have free hands to carry out their job,” stated Kazimir.
The minister met with the president with respect to the recent leak of confidential tax data on a firm co-owned by Kiska. Last week, several media outlets, including TASR, received anonymous emails informing them that Kiska and his brother’s company Kiska Travel Agency (KTAG) was investigated by Financial Administration and the police concerning tax evasion of €27,000 dating back to 2014, with the case related to the funding of Kiska’s presidential campaign. The president’s company subsequently acknowledged and expressed regret for the deed and paid the tax owed, so the matter wasn’t viewed as a crime.
