Kollar Questioned by Police over Communications With Underage Girl
Bratislava, March 9 (TASR) – We Are Family party leader Boris Kollar spent more than four hours on Thursday being questioned by the police regarding his communications with an underage resident of the Clean Day resocialisation centre in Galanta (Trnava region), TASR learnt on the same day.
[Clean Day co-founder Zuzana Tomankova Mikova at a press conference on Wednesday claimed that an unidentified Opposition MP had engaged in lewd communications with a resident of the centre. Kollar later admitted that he had been in contact with the girl, but he claimed that he didn’t know how old she was or that she was a Clean Day resident. – ed. note]
Kollar provided a statement to the police as a witness, said his lawyer Eva Misikova. “My client provided very thorough statements for every circumstance so closely covered by the media yesterday [March 8],” said Misikova when explaining why the interrogation took four hours.
The questioning began in the morning. When it ended, Kollar at first avoided journalists and left. Later, at their request, he returned to the Police Presidium building. “It was all the same. All the same questions over and over – whether I knew her age. Well, I didn’t; of course I didn’t,” he claimed.
Kollar reiterated that the aim behind Tomankova Mikova’s press conference on Wednesday was to divert attention from the Clean Day scandal, of which Kollar has been a vocal critic.
[It was claimed last year that Clean Day staff had been sexually abusing underage residents. Although the Accreditation Commission recommended that Labour, Social Affairs and the Family Minister Jan Richter (Smer-SD) should strip the facility of its licence, he didn’t do so, stating that he saw “no facts or conditions that would legally justify the withdrawal of the licence”. – ed. note]
“You see, all of you are standing here and discussing what I wrote [to the Clean Day resident]. We aren’t speaking at all about the fact that some [Clean Day] resident had her anus torn at some cabin. We don’t talk at all about the fact that someone there had goodbye sex, and we don’t mention the fact that its licence should have been taken away under the law,” he said.
Misikova also criticised the fact that Kollar is being investigated by a specialised unit of the National Crime Agency (NAKA). “I can’t refrain from saying that the deed for which my client was summoned to provide testimony is of significantly lesser seriousness. Such a matter belongs more under the remit of the Police Corps District Directorate,” she claimed, asking whether the private communications of Boris Kollar are linked with corruption – the type of crime that the specialised anti-corruption unit should be investigating instead.
The police refused to provide any further information, citing the ongoing investigation.
