The corruption trial of European Central Bank Governing Council member Peter Kazimir began on Monday, threatening embarrassment to the Frankfurt institution as one of its serving policymakers appeared in a Slovak courtroom.
Kazimir, who denies wrongdoing, faces up to five years in prison if found guilty of offering a 48,000-euro ($52,000) bribe to speed up tax procedures against several companies during his term as the country’s finance minister.
The Slovak central bank governor has bucked pressure to resign from his role, which brings with it membership of the ECB’s 26-strong interest-rate setting body.
“I have never influenced any tax proceedings in favor of any taxpayer during my time as finance minister,” Kazimir told a judge outside Bratislava, reiterating his claim of innocence. His lawyer, Ondrej Mularcik, called the proceedings illegal and said the ultimate aim was to remove Kazimir from office.
The trial sets the stage for the spectacle an ECB official defending himself against a criminal charge while also debating monetary policy for the euro region at a time of intense public scrutiny on decisions to raise borrowing costs and bring inflation under control. It bites particularly close for Slovakia, which has the highest inflation in the single currency area at 11.9%.
It puts Kazimir, 55, on a growing list of ECB Governing Council members since its establishment in 1999 to have faced prosecution over the years.
Most recently, Latvia’s former top central banker, Ilmars Rimsevics, was arrested in 2018 on charges of soliciting bribes from a now-defunct bank and later in witness tampering in two separate cases in the Baltic nation. Those proceedings are ongoing.
The Rimsevics episode led to a 2021 European Union Court of Justice ruling determining that criminal immunity for Governing Council members doesn’t stretch to alleged criminal acts outside their formal role.
A spokesman for the ECB declined to comment.
President Zuzana Caputova has been among officials in the eastern euro-area nation of 5.4 million to call on Kazimir to resign, citing the published testimonies against him.
“It may impact the institution’s credibility domestically and internationally,” Caputova said in April.
Kazimir is the highest-ranking official to be caught up in an anti-graft crackdown against people linked to the party of Prime Minister Robert Fico, who resigned in 2018. The premier, who tops opinion polls ahead of a snap election in September, was forced out in a wave of public anger in the wake of the murder of an investigative journalist who probed corruption.
A dragnet then ensnared more than two dozen judges, prosecutors, policemen, lawyers, secret service officers, and other high-ranking officials who have been sentenced or pleaded guilty to corruption.
Many cooperated with investigators, offering testimony of mafia-like practices. Fico has said the investigations into members of his Smer party and those tied to his former government are politically motivated.
Kazimir, 55, whose term runs until June 1, 2025, is well protected in his office. There is no legal way to dismiss him until the court’s final verdict — a process that could take years in Slovakia.
--With assistance from Craig Stirling and Zoe Schneeweiss.
(Updated with defendant’s quotes from fourth paragraph.)
