6.16. Interblue and supranational flows of money

Although the Metropolitan Savings Cooperative case may appear to be a purely Czech matter, the mechanisms of the fraud are being studied by international investigators. Indeed, the network that siphoned money from the cooperative has also been implicated in other well-known cases of defrauding public money. This is visible, for example, in the case known as the emissions case or the Interblue case.

The group that laundered the money of the criminals around MSD co-owned several companies with the leadership of the Slovak National Party or the Direction SD. According to journalist Antonio Papaleo, Tomas Komada was also part of the network that laundered money from MSD. The journalist found this out through field research and was hired as a white horse. 

Komada founded the R.F. Development company in 2003 together with longtime Prime Minister Robert Fico. They were directly linked financially, and after a while Fico was replaced by his wife Svetlana. Other direct and serious suspicions, according to Papale and police findings, are directed at the leadership of the Slovak National Party (SNS). The latter was supposed to have collected money not only from the Metropolitan Savings Cooperative, but also from the company involved in the well-known Interblue case.

In 2008, Ján Chrbet, then Environment Minister for the CIS, signed a contract with the Interblue Group to sell Slovakia’s surplus emission allowances. The subject of the contract was the sale of 15 million tonnes of greenhouse gas allowances for EUR 5.05 per tonne (total purchase price was EUR 75.75 million), as well as a framework agreement on further sales. 

The conclusion of this agreement during the first Fico government was disadvantageous for Slovakia. While neighbouring countries such as Hungary and the Czech Republic sold their allowances at a price of more than EUR 10 per tonne, Slovakia was satisfied with EUR 5.05 per tonne. Interblue subsequently sold the allowances to Japan at the market price and made a profit of virtually 100%.

The minister refused to publish the contract, was dismissed and replaced by another SNS nominee, Viliam Turský. He had already published the contract on the sale of the issues, but in August of the same year he was also dismissed from his post and replaced by Dusan Čaplovič from the Direction-SD.

The Interblue Group was a completely unknown company at the time, and not surprisingly, its headquarters were registered in a garage at 18217 121st Street, Southeast, Snohomish, Washington 98290, USA. A police investigation later revealed that the owner of the garage had nothing to do with the company, only receiving three hundred dollars for picking up the company’s mail and forwarding it on. 

In September 2009, the chairman of the SDKÚ-DS, Mikuláš Dzurinda, together with the MPs Pavel Fres and Lucie Žitňanska (both SDKU-DS), filed a petition with the General Prosecutor’s Office of the Slovak Republic to cancel the contract between the Ministry of the Environment and the Interblue Group. 

The unusual movement of money in the Swiss account of the Interblue Group made the Swiss police alert – one day 123 million euros came from Japan into the company’s account and the next day 76 million euros went from the account to the Slovak Treasury. Since then, the Swiss have been investigating the suspicions and watching where the remaining 47 million will go.

Copies of Swiss bank statements showed that funds were being moved from the Swiss Interblue Group account to shell companies in Cyprus and Belize. In the past, the media published information that the police had copies of bank documents from the Swiss showing who withdrew the money and who therefore ultimately split the company’s profits, but Interior Minister Robert Kaliňák of Smer-SD did not make this information public.

When the media demanded an answer from Prime Minister Robert Fico as to why Slovakia sold its emission permits for half the value and lost millions, he was unpleasant, did not answer and relied on the fact that the public would never get access to the contracts. 

The investigator of the National Criminal Agency stopped the prosecution in the case on the grounds that the act was not a criminal offence and there was no reason to refer the case. The police were also unable to prove money laundering, which was pointed out by the Swiss police. The case was therefore closed with the conclusion that three people were responsible for the sale (they are not named in the resolution to close the investigation), but the police did not charge them because they “did not obtain sufficient evidence that the state actually sold the permits at a disadvantage”. 

However, the case had a sequel. In January 2010, a fax was sent to the Slovak Republic stating that all assets, claims and contracts of the Interblue Group had been transferred to Interblue Group (Europe) AG, based in Zug, Switzerland. Thus, a company with a similar name based in Switzerland became the legal successor of the US-based Interblue garage. However, the government claimed that the new company failed to prove legal succession and withdrew from the contract to sell the additional issues two months later.

The new Interblue did not give up – in December 2012 it sent an order for 20 million tonnes of emission allowances to Slovakia “in accordance with the contract”. Slovakia did not comply, and Interblue repeatedly called on the Slovak Republic a month later to sell the allowances immediately. The company was unsuccessful, so it turned to lawyers.

In 2013, the Slovak Republic sold more surplus emission allowances, this time to the Spanish. It was in this deal that the Interblue Group, which went out of business in 2010, was revived.  In May 2013, the company entrusted legal representation to Havel Holásek and Partners, which delivered a repeated appeal to the Ministry requesting the exercise of pre-emption rights in the trade. 

In October 2013, Environment Minister József Nagy (Most-Híd) called on Interior Minister Robert Kaliňák to reopen the investigation into the sale of permits. In January 2014, other politicians also joined the call for the sale case to be reinvestigated.

At the beginning of 2014, Attorney General Jaromír Čižnár issued an instruction to review the criminal case. Although the case of the sale of permits concerns the management of the Ministry of the Environment of the Slovak Republic from 2008, the case of unfavourable sale has not been forgotten.

Years later, in 2022, officers from the National Crime Agency conducted a series of raids that led to an investigator charging three people with fraud committed by an organized group. According to the police, the state wasted 66 million on the Interblue case. The main evidence was supposed to be documents from the safe of the accused oligarch and sponsor of both HZDS and Smer-SD, Jozef Brhel. According to many indications, the money from the emissions scandal should have ended up in the possession of former SNS chief Ján Slota. One of the key figures in the case – Rastislav Bilas, who was close to Slota and had been negotiating on behalf of Interblue for some time – was discovered dead in his own garage in 2022, having poisoned himself with exhaust fumes.