Ex-head of the SNS and former mayor of Žilina Ján Slota is scheduled to appear before the appeals court on Tuesday (June 9). This follows from the schedule of hearings of the Supreme Court (NS) of the Slovak Republic. According to the indictment, Ján Slota was at the Žilina Regional Court arrange a lighter sentence for a man who was sentenced to a conditional sentence by the first-instance court. With ex-judge Pavel Polka, he was supposed to arrange for the man’s sentence to be reduced to probation in the appeal proceedings. Ján S. described the indictment as unfounded and based on illegally obtained evidence.
The Specialized Criminal Court (ŠTS) in Banská Bystrica found Ján Slota guilty of indirect corruption in 2024. He sentenced him to two years in prison, with the sentence suspended for four years. The defense filed an appeal directly in the courtroom, as did the prosecutor.
ŠTS has already ruled in this case once, when it sentenced Ján Slota in June 2023 to the same two-year suspended prison sentence with a four-year probationary period, but only for interfering with the independence of the court. According to the court, the defendant failed to prove corrupt criminal activity, there was a lack of clear evidence.
However, the Supreme Court of the Slovak Republic overturned the verdict and returned the case to the ŠTS. As he stated in November 2023, ŠTS did not deal with all the circumstances relevant to his decision and at the same time reached conclusions that are not logically justified.
