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BREAKING:
Major corruption scandal hits Slovenia’s government & its left-wing prime minister Robert Golob just days before the parliamentary election
Top members of his party have been recorded on tapes in which they allegedly discuss the corruption schemes of a minister and other close allies of the prime minister.
The tapes started leaking a few days ago, one after another and paint a picture a deeply entrenched system of corruption at the very top of Slovenia’s current government.
The first recording, which has had its authenticity confirmed by an independent expert, the Secretary General of PM Robert Golob’s party states that Infrastructure Minister Alenka Bratušek siphoned around €2.5 million from the 2nd Railway Track, one of Slovenia’s largest infrastructure projects that meant to remove the logistics bottleneck leading to the Port of Koper.
In another recording, one of Slovenia’s most prominent lawyers, Nina Zidar Klemenčič, explains how the construction of a major Intercontinental hotel in Ljubljana secured permits by paying a 10% commission to the son of the mayor, and how “easy” it is to work with a mayor who has run the capital for 20 years, as long as you deliver that percentage.
Another recording has a former close associate of Golob from his time at the energy company he founded, GEN-I, describing plans to privatize and take over a multi-billion state energy company in case Golob loses the upcoming election and has to hand over power to the opposition.
The recordings also show that key figures remain subordinate to the former president Milan Kučan, who is presented as the one pulling the strings across politics, media, and the economy in Slovenia.
Golob and his far-left government have long been accused of having ties to Slovenia’s post-communist elite.
The allegation is that the political elites, and particularly the secret services, which were in place when Slovenia was still a part of communist Yugoslavia, managed to keep major influence also over the independent Slovenia when it was forming after 1991.
According to critics, the former communist elite and top officials of echelons of the communist secret service managed to take control of large parts of Slovenia’s political systems, judiciary, banking system and media market through a web of corruption and wealth built up during the communist era.
The new tape leaks have restarted the debate about just how deeply the corruption in Slovenia really goes.
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