Government Refuses to Buy National Football Stadium from Kmotrik

Bratislava, July 15 (TASR) – The state won’t buy the recently built National Football Stadium in Bratislava from businessman Ivan Kmotrik, Deputy Prime Minister for Legislation Stefan Holy (We Are Family) announced after a Government meeting on Wednesday.

Holy said that contracts from 2013 and 2016 that would have paved the way for the purchase are invalid. He announced that he’s recommended that the Government should instead file criminal complaints concerning various crimes.

According to Prime Minister Igor Matovic, the key figures responsible for this situation include former education ministers for the Slovak National Party Peter Plavcan and Martina Lubyova, former Government Office director Matus Sutaj Estok (now an MP and ally of ex-premier Peter Pellegrini), Pellegrini himself and his predecessor Robert Fico.

Matovic said that he expects that the other side will defend itself with lawyers, while “nasty” attacks should also be expected from others. Nevertheless, a team of 15 lawyers, working on behalf of the Government, has found out that the contracts in question are invalid, so if the Government were to act in line with them, it would be committing a crime, said Matovic.

The state originally, in 2016, set the maximum purchase price for the non-commercial part of the stadium at €75.2 million. A later decision by Pellegrini’s government in early 2020 increased the cost for the state by almost €17 million, however.

“It’s the responsibility of the current Government to adopt a solution concerning the National Football Stadium, and we believe that this solution will be in line with the law,” reacted Pellegrini via his spokesperson Patricia Medved Macikova.