In addition to Ján Čurilla, police officers Pavel Ďurka, Štefan Mašina, Milan Sabota, Róbert Magula and Branislav Dunčko will also receive an apology.
According to the statement of their lawyer Petr Kubina, it took Šutaj Eštok four months before he even responded to the lawsuit. Thanks to this passivity, the police officers reached a valid and enforceable judgment in record time. A lawsuit was filed in May, and due to the fact that the Slovak minister did not respond to the court’s calls, a judgment was handed down in September. Šutaj Eštok subsequently did not appeal against him, Kubina said on social networks.
The executor has already blocked Šutaj Eštoka’s account for the amount the court ordered the police officers to pay. The final amount includes not only late payment interest, but also costs related to the execution of this claim.
The Minister of the Interior responded on Facebook by saying that he stands by his claims. He argued that the decision came to him in a digital mailbox, which he “didn’t check because of his busy schedule”.
“He punished me for an opinion that I stand by for a long time,” he commented on the account of the judge who made the decision. According to him, he favors the police. Šutaj Eštok announces that he will undergo all remaining legal steps and “will not let his opinion and his convictions be taken away”.
A group of police officers filed a lawsuit for the protection of personality after the Slovak Minister of the Interior compared them to the mobster Mikuláš Černák in his Facebook post at the beginning of April. “Criminals have become heroes,” Šutaj Eštok wrote about police officers.
Ján Čurilla is a Slovak criminologist and former investigator of the National Criminal Agency (NAKA), who participated in the investigation of serious corruption and organized crime. In the past, the so-called “Čurillos”, police officers focused on the fight against the mafia and corruption.
In 2023, he was removed from service by the decision of Šutaj Eštok, and his case sparked a discussion about political interference in police investigations in Slovakia.
