BRATISLAVA, May 20, (WEBNOVINY) — The Office of the Special Prosecutor dismissed the criminal motion of the Environment Ministry against the company Interblue Group with a commentary that the Slovak Republic signed an absolutely disadvantageous contract on the sale of redundant AAU allowances from the start. According to the prosecution, this does not prove an intention of Interblue Group to mislead and defraud the Slovak Republic, stated Beatrice Hudakova, spokeswoman for the Environment Ministry.
Furthermore, the prosecution does not consider “unacceptability of thermal insulation” to be an excuse not to pay a EUR 15 million bonus for carried out Green Investment Scheme projects. It also does not consider the winding down of Interblue Group in the U.S.A. to be purposive. As the investigator failed to prove a serious crime of fraud based on the contract that damaged Slovakia, the Office of the Special Prosecutor rejected the criminal motion. The information was delivered to the ministry on Thursday.
The ministry maintains that representatives of Interblue Group committed a crime. It probably cannot be proven based on the signed contract with the state, but on the basis of malicious behavior by representatives of Interblue Group. The Environment Ministry will consult the issue with criminal law experts to get the case to court, commented Environment Minister Jozsef Nagy.
Environment Minister Nagy filed the criminal complaint against the US-based company Interblue Group without specifying concrete names regarding the unpaid additional price for sold emission allowances (AAU). The ministry suspects that fraud may have been committed against the Slovak Republic.
The Ministry of Environment rejects the argument of Interblue Group that it failed to present a valid Green Investment Scheme, to which the additional payment was bound. The department also refuses to acknowledge the successor company with its seat in Switzerland. The US-based company Interblue Group LLC supposedly ceased to exist at the end of December 2009 without informing the Slovak department of Environment, owing it 15 million euro.
The case of Environment Ministry’s sale of 15 million tons of AAUs led tensions in the previous government. Two environment ministers from the SNS party, who had claimed that the sale to Interblue Group was as profitable as possible, had to leave their office, to be later replaced by Deputy Prime Minister Dusan Caplovic (SMER-SD) and then by a minister nominated by SMER-SD party, which was a violation of the coalition agreement at that time. The Environment Ministry as such was later abolished as a state institution, only to be recreated a couple of months later by the new administration.
SITA