BRATISLAVA, August 6, (WEBNOVINY) – The Prime Minister Iveta Radicova considers parliamentary deputies using taxpayer’s money to pay for additional offices in Bratislava complete nonsense and absurd. The PM responded to Friday’s publicized information about sixteen senior officials of the SaS party, who established a company Liberal House, s.r.o. earlier this month, which will also offer premises for rent to SaS parliamentary deputies. „Moreover, in the house belonging directly to them, this is a clear abuse of public finances. It is also unacceptable that the owners of this house should have income or profit from taxpayers‘ money, which belong to the SaS for the election result. They cannot shed public resources just like that,“ Radicova commented through her spokesperson Rado Bato. „The deputies of all political parties have offices right next to the parliament,“ Radicova said.
The SaS established company has only one business activity – rental of real estate. It plans to buy a property on Priemyselna Street in Bratislava for EUR 2.2 million. They will call it a Liberal House and commercially rent its premises. The company also plans to borrow EUR 700,000 from the bank. The Liberal House should be the headquarters of the SaS party and a number of liberal institutions. The SaS party offered its members sitting in parliament the opportunity to rent deputy offices there, according to the SME daily. The rent for deputy offices, EUR 900 per month for one deputy, is paid by the state.
„This is clearly a conflict of interest and the deputies should be sensitive to the fact that they are dealing with the money of all of us,“ the head of the Fair-Play Alliance Zuzana Wienk told SME. The SaS leader and Speaker of the Parliament Richard Sulik disagrees; what is important is that the building will be rented for reasonable market prices, he thinks. He does not see the conflict of interest there, he told SME „An important question is whether the price for the office will be market and reasonable. If it is market price, everything is OK, I think,“ Sulik said. According to him, the law does not prohibit this. The deputies cannot be the managing directors of companies, but they can have the ownership share. The authorized representative of the rental company is Jozef Boskovic, a founding member of the SaS and a friend of the SaS General Manager Jana Kissova.
SITA