At the request of the Levica party (the Left) MP Matej Tašner Vatovec, the National Assembly recently held a discussion on corruption and the mafia management of our country. The leader of the SDS parliamentary group, Danijel Krivec, said in the introduction to his speech that the proponent of the discussion should be congratulated for the title he chose for the deputies’ debate, as corruption and the mafia management really are a big problem in Slovenia, which becomes especially apparent during the terms of left-wing governments, a member of which was also the Levica party, and thus, they are accusing the wrong party or coalition of these actions, Krivec pointed out.
According to Danijel Krivec, the mafia activities of certain people have been a constant in our country ever since it was formed. Even before its creation, the left-wing political forces did everything in their power to make sure it was not formed at all. “The mafia actions of the left-wing part of our political scene became apparent just before and after the Demos government, which was led by Lojze Peterle, when the then-president Milan Kučan allowed the mass disarmament of the territorial defence of Slovenia, which is the predecessor of the Slovenian Army. And when the people decided in the referendum with a plebiscite majority that they wanted their own country, the mafia activities of the left forces continued. In the then-Assembly, today’s National Assembly of the Republic of Slovenia, left-wing political forces hindered the creation of the state to the point of exhaustion, for example, by disabling the adoption of the defence budget. Jože Mencinger, who is still the “on-call commentator” in the mainstream media, convinced us that we would be forced to eat grass if we were to become independent. And MP Aurelio Juri from Koper even boycotted the solemn proclamation of Slovenia’s independence and instead decided to watch the sea when the event took place.”
According to Krivec, there were many other similar cases of this type of mafia behaviour by our left-wing political community. When independent Slovenia finally became a reality, the left-wing political forces started making up actual mafia stories. “For example, the one about the so-called arms trade, which they kept alive until 2008, despite the fact that the judiciary ruled in 1996 already that there were no crimes in this case. However, the left-wing political forces themselves actually were involved in the arms trade. Let’s just think back to the large quantities of weapons found at the airport in Maribor in 1994.”
The Patria affair is literally a mafia act
The leader of the Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS) parliamentary group believes that the Patria affair could also be described as a mafia act. Left-wing political forces launched it into the political orbit in 2008, just before the elections, and kept it alive until 2015, when the Constitutional Court of Slovenia unanimously decided that Janez Janša, Anton Krkovič, and Ivan Krkovič were tried for acts that were not criminal actions. “But even today, in the National Assembly of the Republic of Slovenia, you will hear certain proud successors of the League of Communists, who will continue to bring up the arms trade or the Patria affair, even though the court proceedings are now over and everything has been cleared up,” Krivec critically summarised the situation, adding that laundering a billion dollars – or more – of dirty Iranian money, which was used to further terrorism around the world, through the Slovenian NLB bank, is also a fairly typical mafia act. “It is clear to everyone that this happened during a left-wing government’s term. However, what is unusual, is that the Slovenian police and prosecutorial system still does not recognise this as a crime. In the 2014-2018 term, two parliamentary committees unequivocally confirmed suspicions that the alleged laundering of Iranian money in the NLB bank violated the applicable law and that abuses of power happened. This is evidenced by numerous documents and publicly available reports on the work of commissions of inquiry. According to the Commission of Inquiry for investigating the alleged money laundering and terrorist financing and the activities of foreign intelligence services at the NLB bank and the alleged money laundering at the Nova KBM bank, the NLB bank was a so-called Iranian scheme, which was controlled directly from the Iranian state.”
“Let’s not forget the mafia actions of the left-wing political forces, which in 2013 also threw more than 5 billion euros into private banks,” Krivec pointed out, adding that today, they are reprimanding the government for creating a state debt of several billion euros. But the current government distributed this money among the people, which is what many other countries also did. According to Krivec, mafia activities cannot be attributed only to the left-wing political forces but also to their political satellites. “I am referring to certain non-governmental organisations, the judiciary, most of the journalism sector and most of the trade unions. The judiciary, which hides behind its supposed independence, is making cardinal mistakes and only protecting itself. They are the only ones who know how thousands of wills can be lost, resulting in thousands of heirs that did not get what was rightfully theirs. They are also the only ones who know how it is possible that Slovenia has the highest number of judges per 100 thousand citizens, and why they spend practically more than any other country per one judge, but at the same time we have the most backlogs and are the country that loses the most lawsuits in the European Court of Human Rights.”
After 1990 and up until today, the mafia methods of the left-wing political underground and their supporters have remained almost exactly the same as in the former Yugoslavia
As Krivec said, the mafia behaviour is also evident with certain non-governmental organisations, which do not benefit the general population in the slightest and are latched on to the state budget. Not to mention journalism. The majority of the media are privately owned, certain media owners have previously been convicted in court, and their media outlets are very clearly in the service of the left-wing political forces, while they are shouting to Europe about how the current government is supposedly oppressing them. Regarding the mafia behaviour of certain unions, Krivec said that when the current government wanted to change the tax legislation in order to ensure higher salaries for everyone, the unions were against it. “Understand that, if you can. In his new book The Parallel Mechanism of the Deep State, Rado Pezdir concretely describes the mafia management of the state and also reveals the mafia actions of the former Yugoslavia. He presents these tactics from the 1990s and up until today when the mafia methods of the left-wing political underground and their supporters have remained almost exactly the same as in the former Yugoslavia.”
As the person who proposed this topic for a session in the National Assembly of the Republic of Slovenia probably tried to accuse the current government of the alleged mafia management of the state during its term, Krivec confronted him with the reality of some facts, such as: “In the period of more than the last ten years, not a single nursing home has been built, but today, they are being built, or at least we have provided the funds for dozens of them. Left-wing governments, however, have spent tens of millions of euros on studies to be done in this area alone. Even the long-term care law was being written by the left-wing governments for more than a decade. However, a few days ago, the current government finally brought it to realisation, with the necessary political support and despite the mafia obstruction of the left-wing political forces. The current government has reversed the trend of lowering the funding for the army and adopted legislation in the field of investments in the Slovenian Army, and similar things apply to the field of healthcare as well, where long-term investments will be ensured,” he said.
Nina Žoher
