The parliamentary group of the Slovenian Democratic Party (Slovenska demokratska stranka – SDS) has recently submitted an interpellation against the Minister of Justice, Dominika Švarc Pipan. The parliamentary group is accusing her of being objectively responsible for the controversial purchase of the premises for the district court on Litijska Street in Ljubljana. Earlier, the SDS party had also filed an interpellation against the Minister of Digital Transformation, Emilia Stojmenova Duh.
“The shameful action is also reflected in the fact that the contract was not even notarised, yet the Ministry of Justice already made a transfer for the purchase of this unusable building,” SDS MP Kaloh said. At the same time, he reminded those gathered at the press conference that the Ministry had not carried out its own appraisal and measurement of the building before the purchase.
At the press conference, SDS MP Dejan Kaloh also pointed out that the Minister’s interpellation is written on 17 pages, and it includes nine key criticisms of the Minister, reports the Slovenian Press Agency.
According to the SDS party’s press release, several circumstances related to the controversial purchase are problematic. The building cost 7.7 million euros, but five years ago, the seller bought it for only 1.7 million euros. The Ministry did not ensure that it carried out its own appraisal prior to the purchase, nor did it measure the building or carefully inspect it, as there are no records of this. The purchase contract was also not notarised before the transfer of the money, so the Ministry could hypothetically be left without a building and without money.
“This is a clear crime,” commented MP Kaloh, pointing out that we are talking about a Minister who is a lawyer and who signed the contract in full knowledge, and who abandoned all the due diligence of all the security safeguards for the transaction to go through.
Initially, the MP pointed out that just before the end of last year, Minister Švarc Pipan had signed a four-page contract with a see-it-buy-it clause for the purchase of a degraded building on Litija Street in Ljubljana. The judges for whom the building was intended were not aware of the purchase and said that the derelict building on the outskirts of Ljubljana would not suffice, nor is it suitable for their work.
They also accuse the Minister of not exercising due care in the purchase of the new court building, “because as Minister of Justice, she should have been aware that by failing to exercise due care and to observe all the safety precautions, she could even have committed an illegal act, and that she may have in some way abused her position as Minister in the purchase of the office building in question.”
Among the reasons for the interpellation, MP Kaloh thus also stressed the suspicion of having committed the offence of dishonesty in office, the offence of damage to public funds, the suspicion of abuse of official position, and the suspicion of misleading the public, as the Minister had publicly said certain untruths when she stated that the Ministry had carried out an appraisal, which later turned out to be untrue. She also said that the purchase was not uneconomic, a claim which was refuted by the State Attorney’s Office of the Republic of Slovenia. MP Kaloh also mentioned the uneconomic management of public funds in the “digitisation of notarial services” project, the coalition’s breaking of its own commitments and promises, and the failure to act in a due diligence manner, which has led to a decline in confidence in the Ministry of Justice. He also drew attention to the additional responsibility of managing public funds, namely the Minister’s use of a Ministry-issued credit card on a private trip to the USA in 2023, which shows the Minister’s low ethical standards.
In the opinion of the SDS party parliamentary group, the Minister’s actions have caused her to lose her personal integrity, as trust in her has crashed. As such, she can no longer perform the role for which she was appointed. MP Dejan Kaloh concluded the press conference by expressing his belief that there would be no interpellation at all, unless the government coalition demonstrated in the National Assembly that it supported corruption and clientelism.
Ž. K.
