Slovak court upholds tax fraud conviction against former President Kiska

BRATISLAVA, Slovakia (AP) — Slovakia’s appeals court on Thursday upheld a lower court’s decision recognizing former president Andrey Kiska found guilty of tax fraud and received a suspended sentence.

At the same time, the regional court in the eastern city of Presov reduced the original suspended sentence from two years to one and overturned a fine of 15,000 euros (about $16,300) handed down to Kiska last year. District Court of Poprad and lifted a six-year business ban.

The verdict is final, but Kiszka said on Facebook he would file an emergency summons to the nation’s Supreme Court to try to clear his name.

Kiska, 61, who pleaded not guilty, became the country’s first former president to be tried and sentenced.

The case began in 2014, when Kiska was running for president. At the time, he was a successful businessman turned philanthropist and a political novice.

According to the court, Kiska illegally included tax revenues from the presidential campaign in the balance sheets of his family company KTAG.

Such activities were not within the scope of the firm’s activities.

KTAG, through Kiski’s partner Eduard Kukovsky, then demanded a tax return of more than €155,000 (about $168,300).

Kiszka beat then-populist Prime Minister Robert Fico in the race to become the country’s president for a five-year term in the largely ceremonial post. Kiska’s tenure was marked by clashes with Fico, whose leftist Smer (Directorate) party was tainted by corruption scandals.

Pussy supported large-scale street protests that led to fall of Fico’s coalition government in 2018 amid a political crisis sparked by the murder last year of an investigative reporter investigating possible widespread government corruption.

The pro-Western Kiska did not run for a second five-year term in 2019.

Last year, Fico and his Smer party won the parliamentary elections and made a deal with two other parties form a new government.