BRATISLAVA, August 23, (WEBNOVINY) — Fallen timber should have been harvested in valleys in the High Tatras National Park after the devastating wind storm in 2004. This would have avoided forest damage caused by bark beetles. This is how the Office of General Prosecutor justifies the charges that a police investigator in Poprad filed against two former Environment Ministers, Laszlo Miklos and Jaroslav Izak, who served in successive governments at that time. Deputy General Prosecutor Ctibor Kostal and Prosecutor of the Criminal Division Ladislav Hanniker informed the media at Thursday’s press conference in Bratislava about the reasons for the prosecution of the two former Cabinet ministers.
According to the prosecution service, the ministers had the duty under the law to act and authorize intervention into nature, even though the destroyed habitat was the fifth and highest degree of nature protection. They should have invoked the institute a state of extreme emergency.
The prosecution service maintains that nature would have coped faster with the intervention of heavy machinery than with the consequences of the bark beetle calamity that followed. According to the charges, with their inaction the ministers caused to Slovakia economic damages of at least EUR 9.39 million, as well as environmental damage of around EUR 2.9 million. „We have no doubt that the report is objective,“ said Hanniker. It was elaborated by the National Forestry Center in Zvolen. The investigators have also questioned several witnesses, but nature conservationists were not among them.
Representatives of the prosecution service defended their decision not to ask for a professional expert statement also from nature conservationists, who actively fought against harvesting the fallen trees. „Conservationists are not among the entities that according to the law are qualified to issue expert opinions,“ said Hanniker.
Former Environment Ministers Laszlo Miklos (SMK) and Jaroslav Izak (SNS) are accused of the crime of endangering the environment and causing environmental damage as well as the offense of obstructing tasks of public officials. If convicted of the crime, the possible sentence is three to eight years in prison and for the offense one to five years. A court now decides about complaints of the accused against the charges. Current Environment Minister Peter Ziga issued a statement in defense of his predecessors. He believes that they acted in accordance with applicable law. He said he considered as „a bit strange“ that they were charged.
According to the charges, the two ministers failed to meet their legal obligations and did not prevent the damage incurred by the activity of bark beetles on the trees destroyed in three valleys in the national park, Ticha, Koprova, and Javorova. Specifically, according to the charges, they did not mange and control the state administration in matters of nature and landscape protection, they did not check in person on the spot the extent of the consequences of the windstorm, they did not fulfill the tasks of chief state supervisor, did not provide for opinions for their decision-making and did not use the state environmental inspection of the Ministry of Environment to determine the real state of affairs. „As a result of this, they did not adopt measures and decisions to liquidate the damaged timber, which would have allowed preventing the extreme multiplication of bark beetle insects,“ said Hanniker. The result, according to him is 70,000 hectares of completely destroyed forest.
A working group of the Office of General Prosecutor conducted a review of the valleys in the national park in 2008. According Hanniker, it found a number of violations of the law, and therefore issued instructions to prosecute a case. „Over the next four years, we have painstakingly documented the consequences of the spread of the bark beetle calamity and in accordance with the law of nature and landscape protection, we issued instructions to charge two mentioned individuals,“ the prosecutor clarified.
SITA