BRATISLAVA, June 11, (WEBNOVINY) — The preliminary injunction by which a District Court Judge in Bratislava banned the publication of a book by Canadian investigative journalist Tom Nicholson about the Gorilla graft scandal in Slovakia before early elections in March is no longer valid. „The appellate court has changed the resolution of the first instance court so that it rejects the proposal to issue the preliminary injunction and to secure evidence in the case“, spokesman for the Regional Court in Bratislava Pavol Adamciak informed SITA news agency on Monday.
However, the appellate court only ruled on the preliminary injunction and not on the merit of the case itself. „The senate of the appellate court examined the need for an interim arrangement between the parties of the pending court case on the matter and found that the statutory prerequisites were not met for issuing the preliminary injunction and to secure evidence in the case,“ the court explained the reason for its decision. „In order to be able to issue a preliminary injunction, all the statutory prerequisites must be met, which in this case were not, and therefore the decision of the court of first instance was wrong,“ the explanation of the decision further states. Only the basis of evidence the District Court will be able to decide whether the opponents (Petit Press publishing house and Tom Nicholson) will have to refrain from any action that would result in a threat to personal rights of the plaintiff.
District Court Bratislava I Judge Branislav Kral issued the preliminary injunction banning the publication of the book by Tom Nicholson at the request of the partner of the financial group Penta Jaroslav Hascak, whose name appears in the leaked secret service file codenamed Gorilla. Several journalistic organizations criticized the decision of the judge, describing it as censorship. The court argued that this was not censorship, because in the current situation the right to privacy prevails over the right to provide information in a book. The alleged secret service document describes alleged political influence of the financial group on political decisions. The extensive material describes how persons were nominated to state-run enterprises, privatization commissions, and a web of relationships across politics, business, and security services. Although it was confirmed that the secret service surveillance action codenamed Gorilla was actually carried out, the authenticity of the document published on the Internet was not verified, on the contrary, several people featuring in the paper questioned its authenticity.
SITA