Hlina: Signing of Anti-fraud Memorandum Embarrassing Farce

Bratislava, 1 September (TASR) - The signing of a memorandum by the the Interior Ministry and the Agriculture and Rural Development Ministry that is supposedly aimed at speeding up and streamlining investigations into the suspected misuse of funds distributed through the Agricultural Payment Agency (PPA) was an embarrassing farce, a tragicomedy, opposition MP Alojz Hlina (SaS) declared at a press briefing on Tuesday.

"The whole thing was an embarrassing comedy and a farce for the cameras that were there yesterday, because they captured what was supposedly a historic moment. When you break it down, it's even more sad, embarrassing and ridiculous. It's a comedy for ordinary people and also a comedy aimed at the European Union. I'm just curious who the two of them think they are going to fool by claiming that this is actually the solution," said Hlina.

The MP underlined that the wording of the memorandum should be made public. "I haven't found it so far. If I've been looking in the wrong place, correct me. If someone has already published it, I'd be happy to read it. I'm genuinely interested in what the text contains. I hope we won't find out that it's classified, because in this country, everything is already classified," he said.

The opposition MP suspects that the memorandum could serve as some kind of device aimed at preventing investigators from looking into anything too closely.

The memorandum, signed on Monday (31 August) by Agriculture and Rural Development Minister Richard Takac (Smer-SD) and Interior Minister Matus Sutaj Estok (Voice-SD), states that the Agriculture and Interior Ministries want to jointly speed up and streamline investigations into suspected misuse of funds distributed through PPA.