ECB governing council member convicted of bribery

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Peter Kažimír, governor of the National Bank of Slovakia and a member of the European Central Bank’s governing council, was convicted of bribery on Thursday and fined €200,000, just days before his term is due to expire.

Despite the ruling, Kažimír, an old political ally of Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico, is expected to remain as the country’s central bank governor beyond the scheduled end of his six-year term at the start of June.

The verdict can be appealed and doesn’t force him from office. Before Thursday, Slovak lawmakers were deadlocked over whether to reappoint him. Kažimír will continue to take part in ECB rate-setting meetings, with the next decision on June 5.

Kažimír, who served as finance minister under a previous Fico administration, did not attend the court hearing. In a pre-recorded statement, he denied wrongdoing and pledged to appeal against any conviction.

Presiding judge Milan Cisarik ruled that Kažimír would face a one-year prison sentence should he fail to pay the fine. Prosecutors had sought prison, accusing Kažimír of acting as an intermediary in the payment of a bribe to a former senior tax official while serving as finance minister.

The National Bank of Slovakia said on Thursday that it took note of the verdict against its governor, who is currently on a work trip to Hong Kong. “The bank continues to operate without restrictions and carries out its functions in full,” it added.

Ondrej Mularcik and Eva Sihelnikova, Lawyers of Slovakia Central Bank Governor Peter Kažimír © Radovan Stoklasa/Reuters

The case against Kažimír almost collapsed last year after Fico’s government pushed through contentious amendments to the criminal code, including a shortened statute of limitations. However, it was revived when the prosecution argued that the alleged bribery offence harmed the financial interests of the EU, placing it outside the reach of the domestic legislation.

In an earlier round of the long-running court battle two years ago, Kažimír was issued with a €100,000 fine, which prompted the prime minister and president at the time to urge him to quit as governor. But Kažimír started a lengthy appeal process and stayed on at the central bank when Fico returned to power to start a fourth mandate as prime minister in 2023.

Opposition parties have long pushed to remove Kažimír because of the bribery case. Fico’s coalition has also been split because some politicians in his Smer party have sought to present an alternative candidate. They blame Kažimír for helping to set up a rival party, Hlas, led by Slovakia’s President Peter Pellegrini. Under Slovak law, the central bank governor is named by the government, approved by parliament and signed into office by the president.

Fico buried the hatchet with Pellegrini and helped him last year to become elected as president, as a follow-up to the 2023 deal that they struck to form Fico’s unwieldy coalition government, led by Smer and including Hlas and another junior ultranationalist partner.

But on Wednesday, Pellegrini used a state of the nation address to parliament to distance himself from Fico’s pro-Russia foreign policy. Pellegrini called on Fico to keep Slovakia, which is a member of the EU and Nato, firmly within its western alliance, as “the most important one for Slovakia’s national interests”.

Pellegrini’s message came after Fico sparked street protests in Slovakia when he visited Russian President Vladimir Putin last December. Fico then ignored warnings from Brussels to make another trip to Moscow this month, as the only EU leader to attend the celebrations commemorating the 80th anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany in the second world war.

Kažimír’s lawyer has been approached for comment. The ECB declined to comment.

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