- According to Tibor Gašpar, Marta Šimečková shifted the responsibility for subsidies to a co-worker.
- Gašpar claims that falsified bank statements were used in subsidy applications.
- Amounts and data should have been changed in the account statements of the Forum Project.
- The Forum project received EUR 50,000 from the Ministry of Justice during the height of the covid crisis.
Statutory member of the civic association (OZ) Projekt Fórum Marta Šimečková abused her co-worker Andrea Puková and blamed her for the case with subsidies. He stated this at a press conference Deputy Speaker of Parliament Tibor Gašpar (Smer-SD). He also pointed to the falsification of accounting documents or the receipt of covid subsidies.
According to Gašpar, falsified bank statements can be used for a variety of purposes. “The bank statements that you falsify and then have to submit, perhaps when applying for some kind of subsidy, can be considered falsified documents, for which the person providing the subsidy should not give you a subsidy at all.” he stated.
At the same time, the MP claims that the sums have been changed in the statement of accounts that the OZ submitted to the state for the years 2020 to 2022. Some selections are deleted from there, with some transfers other names are added. “This is similar to classic tax cheats and ‘VAT cheaters’,” pointed out Gašpar.
He also pointed to the subsidy for the Forum Project from 2021 in the amount of 50,000 euros from the Ministry of Justice. Gašpar reminded that in 2021 the covid crisis was at its peak and the state was on crisis alert. “Of course, that money only came so that Marta Šimečková could survive that year in the Forum Project unscathed, despite the fact that many citizens did not receive this help from the state, they may have had to leave their trades, their businesses, and the non-profit organization Projekt Fórum only received 50,000 euros from the Ministry of Justice,” he said.
The deputy also criticized the fact that Šimečková did not submit the accounts of the Association for the years 2018 and 2019, because they were supposed to have been stolen. According to him, complete accounting would reveal who was financed through the Forum Project, to whom the payments went and what was paid from the money intended exclusively for the implementation of the international conference.
“Mrs. Šimečková is a citizen who entered into a financial relationship with the state, she is a long-term recipient of taxpayer funds in the form of various subsidies and grants, it is all of our money, and it seems that this was done through subsidy fraud. So yes, the public must be interested in this, especially if it is a direct relative of the chairman of Progressive Slovakia,” Gašpar explained in response to why they are dealing with the case of subsidies.
The government audit regarding the use of public subsidies also revealed deficiencies in the civil association Projekt Fórum, in which Šimečková, the mother of the opposition PS leader Michal Šimečka, is a statutory member. In March, the police started a new criminal investigation in connection with the Forum Project on suspicion of subsidy fraud.
Šimečková responded that she never got rich from this association. She claims that, on the contrary, she went into debt to keep the project going. At the same time, Šimečková admitted that she neglected administrative matters in the OZ. However, she is ready to bear the legal consequences.
