STA, 30 June 2020 - Opposition parties bar the SNS spoke on Tuesday of independent police work in the investigation into ventilator procurement and called on the government to take a cue from the resignation of Interior Minister Aleš Hojs. Coalition parties were mostly reserved, an exception being PM Janez Janša, who said it is time to end "selective justice".

Commenting on today's house searches conducted over suspected abuse of office in the March procurement of medical ventilators and the resulting resignation of Hojs and Police Commissioner Anton Travner, former PM Marjan Šarec of the opposition LMŠ said the "entire government is ripe for resignation".

"Attempts to conceal things with attacks on the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) and the entire police force show that the independence of the prosecution authorities is a thorn in the side of those in power," tweeted Šarec, who feels an early election is the only way forward.

Tanja Fajon of the SocDems, the second largest opposition party, said Slovenia was dealing with a crime of epic proportions that seems to go all the way to the top of the government instead of focusing on the major challenges ahead.

Fajon, who suspects the government "failed to prevent the house searches", argued the conspiracy theories being peddled are merely an attempt to divert attention. The government has no political and moral clout left, she added, calling on Janša to resign.

Luka Mesec of the Left said Hojs and Travner resigned "over regret they didn't manage to discipline the police to a point where there would be no more criminal police following their own conscience and professional ethics".

Mesec, who expects PM Janez Janša will now try to appoint somebody "who will do a better party job in the police force", added the government has already turned to its known strategy - "personal discreditation and attacks on criminal police officers, which is unheard off". The Left will protect the independence of the police and wants an early election, he said.

Alenka Bratušek of SAB said Hojs's resignation showed he "had a somewhat peculiar notion" about how the police force operated. While saying she was content the police were doing their job and not shying away from investigating government officials, Bratušek argued that such probes were too often only a show for the public.

She does feel that the time is ripe for Janša "to face the mirror" as well and assume responsibility for the opaque procurement of PPE during the crisis. Bratušek spoke of the possibility of an no-confidence motion in the entire government, mentioning DeSUS as a coalition party that could be won over to secure the needed absolute majority.

The only opposition party leader to echo Hojs's reasoning that the police's operation was politically motivated was Zmago Jelinčič of the National Party (SNS).

"Certain leading staff in the police force are politically appointed and undermine the police's professional work," he said, expressing surprise over Hojs's resignation and arguing he had expected "Hojs would start cleaning up at the police force".

Meanwhile, the coalition parties were mostly reserved in their reactions today so far, with the ruling Democrats (SDS) and New Slovenia (NSi) initially refusing to comment.

SDS head and PM Janša responded later with a letter entitled Selective Justice, in which he said he would not comment on an ongoing procedure, but wanted to comment on the "double standards in the priority choices of the NBI, the prosecution, and the judiciary".

Janša wrote that it is "political sympathies and media pressure" that have been governing the choices of all three for some time as opposed to the scale of the crimes.

He said that no epilogue had been seen for other "hundreds of millions of euros" worth of crimes in the healthcare system, no house searches conducted related to a suspected EUR 1bn in money laundering for Iran at NLB bank, and no criminal complaints filed against the owners of several media outlets despite ample evidence of "harmful contracts and annexes through which these factories of rotten news are attached to taxpayers' money".

Janša argued that selective justice and the "general politicisation of a part of the repressive apparatus prevents a normal functioning of parliamentary democracy in the country".

"It is therefore our duty and it is high time that we secure a consistent honouring of the Constitution and laws and equal standards for everybody," Janša concludes.

Meanwhile, the Modern Centre Party (SMC), whose head and Economy Minister Zdravko Počivalšek is also being investigated, has not yet commented, while DeSUS head Aleksandra Pivec said she expected the investigation would be conducted in a fair and objective manner.

She urged the calming of political passions and also did not comment on Hojs's views. Asked how the developments will impact the coalition, she said things were still underway. "Once more will be known, I expect the coalition partners to also sit down, get familiar with the facts and then adopt decisions," she said.

All our stories on the PPE scandal can be found here

STA, 30 June 2020 - Interior Minister Aleš Hojs told the press on Tuesday that he had tendered his resignation to PM Janez Janša and that Janša accepted it. Hojs, who suggested the investigation into ventilator procurement showed the police were serving the deep state, added he had accepted the resignation of Police Commissioner Anton Travner before that.

Hojs linked the resignation to the house searches conducted today by the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) at several locations, including with Economy Minister Zdravko Počivalšek. Media have reported police suspect abuse of office in the March procurement of medical ventilators.

Hojs said he had been informed that the sting operation was under way by Deputy Police Commissioner Jože Senica at around 8am this morning. An hour later he was informed that Počivalšek, a protected person, had been deprived of his liberty for the duration of the house search.

Hojs believes that today's developments are politically motivated, that the procedures are political, which is why he accepts "political responsibility, as this responsibility rests with the minister". Thus he offered his resignation to the prime minister, who has already accepted it.

"As a minister I never interfered in the work of the police in the sense of whom and why to investigate. My position was always that order needs to be introduced for everybody in this country, meaning that all crimes need to be investigated," Hojs said, while defending his decision to have internal oversight conducted at the NBI.

He added that it was impossible to ignore that there were scores of shelved procedures at the prosecution and at courts and that he "cannot accept that the directing of the police is not done so much by the police commissioner or anybody else who should be doing it, meaning the entire structure within the police".

Instead, argued Hojs, the police force is directed "by the weekly Mladina, by prosecutors who have proven in the past to mostly lead procedure against politically inappropriate persons - meaning against the right".

According to Hojs, they have but one goal - "to discredit the ministers, the prime minster and achieve the much desired collapse of this coalition and preservation of all privileges that they have been afforded all these years by the centre-left coalition, the SocDems always being a part of it".

"It will be hard to convince me that this is not a political police force, change my view that the police are serving the deep state and not the citizens," said Hojs, whose resignation letter speaks of structures that are allegedly still linked to the Communist secret service UDBA and the Communist Party.

Hojs wrote that "despite that change at the top of the police force and staffing changes carried out so far by the police commissioner, I assess that the UDBA-Party-based structure of the decisive segment of the police force, in concert with the prosecution and judiciary of the same origin, is still so deeply anchored in the system as to prevent me from effectively depoliticising and changing the police force".

Security expert Miroslav Žaberl expressed concern over this statement, saying it suggested that the changes made to the police force by Hojs were political and not based on professional criteria.

The reasons Hojs gave for his resignation show he believes that the force must be rearranged in a way to make it "ours". But the police are in the service of the people and not of political parties, Žaberl said.

The police are independent in their work and no politician can affect police procedure, said Žaberl, adding that the interior minister could not be informed in advance of specific police activities.

The Police Trade Union of Slovenia (PSS) also reacted to Hojs's claims, calling them "unfounded and completely without ground". Since they are damaging to all police officers, the PSS expects an apology from the outgoing minister, the union said.

Responding to the Hojs's and Travner's resignations, Janša thanked them in a tweet for professional and dedicated work they had done in providing safety and preserving health, adding that not everybody at the Interior Ministry "had the same goal".

Hojs, who will continue running the ministry until parliament is officially notified of his resignation, was one of the more exposed ministers after the Janša government took over in March.

He was a proponent of strict lockdown restrictions, who openly criticised the public's behaviour, made headlines in the face of prompt replacements at the top of key positions in the police force, as well as with calls that police take tougher action against the protesters who have been protesting against the government each Friday for over months.

Another story involving Hojs was the Interior Ministry's decision to override a ban on a concert by Croatian nationalist singer Marko Perković Thompson. This earned him an ouster motion by the opposition, which will not be processed now.

The 58-year-old started his political career as a member of Christian democratic parties, last of New Slovenia (NSi), which expelled him in 2016 amid claims he was hurting the party's reputation. Hojs, who served as defence minister in the 2012/13 Janša government, ran on the ticket of Janša's Democrats (SDS) in 2018. He was the director of the Nova24TV media outlet before becoming minister in March.

STA, 30 June 2020 - The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) is reportedly conducting house searches at 11 locations today over suspected abuse of office in the March procurement of medical ventilators. According to the news portal nezenzurirano.si, police have also visited the Economy Ministry and are investigating the EUR 8.8 million deal with Geneplanet.

The suspects reportedly include Economy Minister Zdravko Počivalšek and his senior aide Andreja Potočnik who was involved operationally in talks with the suppliers of medical and protective equipment.

Police are said to have also visited the Commodity Reserves Agency, which organised the procurement and one of whose senior employees, Ivan Gale, went public in April to speak about heavy political meddling. Gale highlighted Počivalšek and the favouring of Geneplanet, a Slovenian intermediary, in the purchasing of ventilators.

The suspects are reportedly suspected of abuse of office that resulted in grave damage to public finances, an offence that carries a prison sentence of one to eight years.

The criminal instigation, led by the specialised state prosecution, was launched two months ago, after a TV Slovenija Tarča current affairs show that featured Gale and an audio recording of Minister Počivalšek demanding that the Commodity Reserves Agency execute an advance payment to Geneplanet.

The Commodity Reserves Agency wrote that NBI officers visited the agency today and conducted an interview with its former head Anton Zakrajšek and the signatory of the contract with Geneplanet, Alojz Černe.

"The agency has consistently been cooperating constructively with all bodies investigating its past deals," the press release says.

The investigation prompted today the resignation of both Police Commissioner Anton Travner and Interior Minister Aleš Hojs. The latter suggested the operation showed the police were serving the deep state and not the citizens.

While Počivalšek, who is the head of the junior coalition Modern Centre Party (SMC), survived a no-confidence motion in parliament over opaque PPE and ventilator purchases earlier this month, a criminal complaint was also filed against him last week by the editorial board of the weekly Mladina.

The 220 Siriusmed R30 ventilators ordered through Geneplanet, a deal which Gale said had been described by Počivalšek at a meeting as a deal for the senior coalition Democrats (SDS), have been one of the central coronavirus procurement stories.

Critics have warned that the ventilators provided by Geneplanet had been picked even though an expert evaluation group had expressed reservations about them and put them at the very bottom of a list of ventilators deemed appropriate.

While critics also claimed they were outdated, pricey, and mostly delivered without essential additional equipment, the government has defended the purchase by pointing to the circumstances on markets and scarce access to ventilators in what had been the peak of the coronavirus crisis in mid-March.

The contract with Geneplanet was changed after the story broke and as the epidemiological situation improved, so the company ended up delivering 110 ventilators while also buying 20 back. According to the business newspaper Finance, the final price tag was EUR 3.6 million.

The covers and editorials from leading weeklies of the Left and Right for the work-week ending Friday, 19 June 2020.

Mladina:  SDS and systemic corruption

STA, 19 June 2020 - Those opposing the government of Janez Janša, the head of the Democrats (SDS), should bear in mind that it was money rather than politics that made the SDS want to come to power, so the opposition should pledge already now to check every deal the government made during the coronavirus epidemic, Mladina comments on Friday.

"We have known for years that the SDS is a business model rather than a political party. And when it came to power, the party immediately started doing business," the left-leaning weekly adds.

When the epidemic started simultaneously with the new government assuming office, the party channelled public money for personal protective equipment towards intermediaries to get millions in commission fees, while claiming that people are dying.

"And then we realized: yes, people are dying, but you turned it into a business, which is why bicycle protests appeared in ... Slovenian towns in the first place," editor Grega Repovž says in the commentary headlined Let's Go Back to the Beginnings.

During the worst of the crisis they changed legislation to carry out large investments which no longer require any oversight and which come with large commission fees. At the same time one was witnessing the disintegration of oversight institutions, including the police, so that evidence about the controversial deals could disappear.

Repovž suggests the SDS is doing it because it knows they have little time before the next election, at which "they will probably not get enough votes" to remain in power.

"They know exactly what they are doing. This is a very well organised clique with clear intentions - to appropriate means, financial flows, privatise businesses and redirect investments so that they control them in the long run.

"This is nothing new, we have seen it in practically all East European countries. From Ljubljana to Moscow this world is very similar. And it has a name: systemic corruption."

Mladina says that staying focussed on the fact that "it's all about money, not about politics" for the SDS should help those who oppose the government to be more united.

And already today opposition politicians should pledge to check every deal from the period when the entire immune system of the state was suspended in the name of the epidemic. For starters, one should calculate all commission fees which selected companies received in procuring protective equipment.

Reporter: No-confidence motions could further strengthen govt

STA, 15 June 2020 - The right-wing weekly Reporter notes in Monday's commentary that the scandal on the procurement of protective masks and ventilators, which failed to sweep away Economy Minister Zdravko Počivalšek, did not cause any harm to the senior coalition Democrats (SDS). The government remains firmly in the saddle, perhaps even more firmly than it looks.

The government will also not be brought down by the upcoming attempts to oust Interior Minister Aleš Hojs over a Thompson concert or Defence Minister Matej Tonic over a military incident on the border with Italy, says editor-in-chief Silvester Šurla.

Ideological efforts of the opposition in both cases could actually have the opposite effect than desired - they could make the coalition stronger instead of weaker, Šurla says.

If no major scandals erupt in the next couple of years, and if no new face emerges on the left, Janša will stay PM also after the next election.

"Tanja Fajon leading the SD does not pose a risk, since she is too leftist a politician to pick any votes from the centre as Borut Pahor did in 2008. Marjan Šarec is also obviously not aiming for the centre, as the LMŠ is increasingly turning left and becoming a copy of the Left."

Only the SAB remains in the centre-left among opposition parties, but the possibility of Alenka Bratušek ever becoming prime minister again is almost non-existent, much like with Šarec.

According to Šurla, it is no secret that Šarec and Bratušek do not like each other, and that Bratušek does not like the Left, which is actually to be blamed for the collapse of Šarec's government.

By denying support for the Šarec cabinet, the coordinator of the Left, Luka Mesec, has shown that the Left is an "extremist, destructive party which cannot even stick with a left-leaning government if all its wishes are not fulfilled".

So the more voters of the Left will vote for the SD and LMŠ instead, the higher probability of a left-leaning government, Šurla says in the editorial entitled Wind in the Sails.

All our posts in this series are here

STA, 4 June 2020 - Slovenia has implemented two thirds of GRECO's recommendations pertaining to preventing corruption among MPs, judges and prosecutors, which puts it among the top ten countries in terms of implementation, shows a report released by the Council of Europe's (CoE) Group of States against Corruption (GRECO).

GRECO's annual report for 2019 says that by 31 December, Slovenia fully implemented 14 out of a total of 21 recommendations made by the CoE's anti-corruption body.

Another five were partly implemented and two were not.

As a result, Slovenia emerged one of the 14 countries covered by the report which did not implement all GRECO recommendations by the end of 2019.

The report, released on Wednesday, also shows that only Finland and Norway implemented all GRECO recommendations for MPs, judges and prosecutors.

Slovenia was among the countries which implemented the greatest share of recommendations for prosecutors - 89%.

While Finland, Norway and Sweden fully implemented all recommendations for judges, Slovenia's share in this segment amounted to 75%.

However, Slovenia was one of the 14 countries which did not fully implement a single recommendation for prevention of corruption among MPs.

The country which had received the largest number of recommendations from GRECO was Turkey (37), followed by Greece and North Macedonia (each 25).

Faring slightly better than Slovenia had been Austria (20) as well as Belgium, Bulgaria and Estonia (each 19).

STA, 22 May 2020 - The cycling protests against the government's actions and policies continued for the fifth Friday running, with several thousand protesters reported again in Ljubljana. Signatures for the resignation of the government started to get collected, while one group also expressed support to the government.

Before the evening protest in parliament square - whose police-controlled section got a large 'our property' sign in the afternoon - a stream of cyclists occupied the streets around Parliament House, while the protesters also ventured to Ljubljana's main thoroughfare, Dunajska street, and the Environment Ministry located there.

The government's clampdown on environmental NGOs has been among the protesters' main grievances in recent weeks, after the protests were initially galvanised by revelations of alleged heavy political meddling in the purchases of PPE and ventilators during the coronavirus epidemic and PM Janez Janša's clash with the media.

Massive anti-government protest in Ljubljana, Slovenia, today, for the fifth straight Friday. pic.twitter.com/213XPqrBwy

— Bob Ramsak (@BobRamsak) May 22, 2020

The Ljubljana Anarchist Initiative, one of the unofficial organisers, wrote that millions of euros from the public budget continued to be appropriated by political and economic elites under the guise of a state of emergency.

"We've broken the curse of the epidemic, now we need to be break the virus of the holders of power," they wrote, while rejecting any kind of political meddling in the protests.

A novelty this week was the collecting of signatures for the government's resignation, while some of the participating groups also specified their demands.

The list by one of the more prominent groups includes the "end of corruption, of disrespectful public speech, fomenting of divisions, of hate and fear...end of attacks on civil society ...on independent media...the end of putting the interests of capital before the benefits of people and the environment".

Another new development was a group of a dozen men, allegedly motor-bikers, who formed a line in front of public broadcaster RTV Slovenija wearing yellow vests that spelled out "thank you government!"

PM Janša meanwhile lashed out against the protesters by comparing them to the self-styled paramilitary units or nationalist home guards that recently made headlines, arguing both were extremely offensive to the police.

The comment by Janša, who has also labelled the protesters as 'caviar socialists', came after 50 home guards in uniform visited a local police station last Sunday in protest over a police inquiry into a training camp they had held nearby.

Smaller cycling protests were again also held in some other cities. Several hundred protesters reportedly gathered in Maribor.

STA, 10 May 2020 - In the wake of an anti-government rally that saw several thousand people take to the streets across the country on their bicycles on Friday, a photo of a protestor taking a photo with a police officer has raised a lot of dust. The officer became a target of online criticism, prompting a police trade union to issue a letter of support.

"The pogrom that came from the ranks of certain politicians and even government ministers is highly offensive toward all of Slovenia's 8,000 police employees," the Police Trade Union (SPS), one of the two in Slovenia, said in an open letter of support.

On Saturday Cohesion Minister Zvonko Černač tweeted "Such officers make up less than a 1% of the police force. They are an insult to thousands of their colleagues. Therefore they need to be removed of their masks and should switch from riding motorbikes, paid by the taxpayer, to bikes."

Trade union head Kristjan Mlekuš underlined in the letter that police officers at rallies are always devoted to their fundamental mission and that their top priority is for the protestors and themselves to return home safely.

Lepo je to videt. @policija_si ???? pic.twitter.com/rhAnrfwS9Y

— Matej Špehar (@MatejSpehar) May 8, 2020

"The police officer who has been target of discreditations acted in the given moment according to his strategic consideration and clearly showed the crowd with his action that his job was to ensure their safety," the union said.

Sometimes, in tense situations, police officers must react to provocations with a smile and not make the situation worse. "And police officers are capable of this because we do our jobs without bias, with dedication and professionally."

The union said police officers will not be discredited for doing their job professionally and commended the officer in question as well as all other who worked at the rallies for a job well done.

Prime Minister Janez Janša responded to the trade union's letter, tweeting that Slovenia was the only country in the world where a police trade union is fighting against measures to make police officers' life easier and supported violations of the infectious diseases act.

Meanwhile, the other police trade union also expressed support for the police officer smiling for the selfie. "Politicians should deal with politics, and leave public order and peace and internal security to us," the union said on its web site.

The photo and reactions to it has stirred a variety of responses, among them by former Prime Minister Marjan Šarec, who expressed support for the officer. The police officers' "job is hard enough without threats from minister."

The protests themselves were also criticised by the ruling coalition. Janša indicated on Friday that they had been orchestrated by the "extreme left", sharing a photo of Social Democrats (SD) members at the protests and a photo of a man waving the Yugoslavian flag at the Maribor rally.

MEP and member of the SD Tanja Fajon tweeted in response that "this was not a protest of the extreme left, but a peaceful protest of the civil society across the entire Slovenia against a populist right-wing government".

Janša also said on Saturday that if the coronavirus epidemic measures imposed by the government had been bad "the caviar socialists would not have been able to ride their bikes yesterday. They would have been in hospital, quarantine or self-isolations."

Meanwhile, Defence Minister Matej Tonin tweeted that the message of the protestors must be taken seriously and that the society must do its best to preserve democracy and develop it through dialogue and within democratic institutions.

Tonin also tweeted that he perceived the protests as a reflection of people being tired of limitations and fearing for their future.

Tonin later deleted the tweet, saying in a Facebook post on Saturday that he had done that after realising that a part of the opposition abused the protests and incited with false arguments.

The police have meanwhile said that 23 warnings had been issued at the protests, which were staged despite a ban on public gathering still in place in Slovenia.

It forwarded 49 reports to the National Institute for Public Health (NIJZ), the body with powers to impose fines for the violations of relevant health legislation. Moreover, the police also initiated three misdemeanour charges for public order violation.

Rallies were staged in many towns across the country, the biggest in Ljubljana, where some 5,500 people rode their bikes around the city centre, according to police estimates.

STA, 27 April 2020 - While lockdown measures remain in force, some Slovenians have started hitting the streets to protest against the government and the continuation of quarantine, with a few hundred people gathering in Ljubljana on Monday, several hundred in Maribor and smaller rallies held in several other cities.

The protests were initiated by a Facebook group called Resistance against the Government of the Republic of Slovenia, which calls for the situation in the country to be normalised and for Prime Minister Janez Janša to resign.

Around 150 people gathered in the square in front of Parliament House in Ljubljana at noon, and the number of protesters roughly doubled when newcomers lifted a fence set up by the police and joined the rally.

Several media reports say that there were no incidents or conflicts, with the police only warning the protesters to keep a safe distance among themselves.

One of the protesters called for national unity and "against plundering by both left and right" and for the "robbery of taxpayer money" to end, drawing some applause from the crowd.

Some of the signs called for Janša's resignation, while some individuals decided to hold impromptu speeches to call against the misuse of public money and for the measures to contain the coronavirus epidemic to be lifted.

A speech was delivered by Ladislav Troha, a former army officer who has become a major proponent of conspiracy theories online and has been on the fringe of many protests over the past decade and more.

Some of the protesters invoked widely circulated conspiracy theories saying they were rebelling against the deployment of 5G telecommunications technology and government plans to implant chips into them, according to videos circulated on social media.

Joining the call for protests were Facebook users in Nova Gorica, Ptuj, Trbovlje and Maribor. In Slovenia's second largest city, around 1,000 people gathered for a peaceful walk through the city streets, according to local media reports. Police say the number of protestors was much lower, just 100.

In some towns, people also carried signs in support of Ivan Gale, the whistleblower from the Commodity Reserves Agency who has revealed for national television political pressures in the procurement of personal protective equipment.

A Facebook page has been created in support for Gale, so far attracting some 54,000 members. Its moderators said yesterday that they had nothing to do with today's protests and disavowed the events.

Ljubljana police said there were roughly 200 people at the rally in Ljubljana, whose organisers registered the event on Friday but did not get permission due to the lockdown restrictions.

Maribor police said they had warned protestors they were violating the restrictions on movement and gathering. Reports against 19 persons were submitted to the Health Inspectorate, which controls quarantine compliance.

Interior Minister Aleš Hojs said on Twitter that police in Ljubljana and Maribor had IDd a large number of protestors, who will be fined. "They will also file criminal complaints against the organisers and participants, this constitutes the crime of hazard to health," he said.

Hojs also expects the police will ID additional participants with the help of published photographs and video. "The majority of the citizens are concerned about health and comply with the decrees," he said.

Monday's protests are the latest in a series of anti-government manifestations that started, mostly on social media, soon after the country went into lockdown.

A protest against restrictions of freedom during the epidemic was held on Friday as dozens of cyclists roamed the centre of Ljubljana, ringing bells, whistling and carrying slogans.

The protest, which was organised by a Facebook group which had previously been calling for protests from balconies and windows, also called against giving the army police powers to patrol the border and against attacks on journalists.

STA, 24 April 2020 - A report by public broadcaster TV Slovenija on Thursday showed extensive political interference in the procurement of personal protective equipment (PPE), with a senior employee of the Commodities and Reserves Agency pointing a finger at Economy Minister Zdravko Počivalšek, his aides and former executives. Počivalšek denies any wrongdoing.

Ivan Gale, who stood in for the agency's director Anton Zakrajšek after he contracted the coronavirus, told the Tarča current affairs show that Počivalšek had personally intervened in favour of a ventilator contract with the company Geneplanet worth EUR 8 million.

A recording of a phone call between Počivalšek and a representative of the agency was played in which Počivalšek provides guidance on how the contract should be handled.

Počivalšek also "sent his envoy Andreja Potočnik to the agency and she pressured us, the director, screamed at the head of finance to transfer the money to the company," Gale said.

The agency had also been pressured into signing a contract with Geneplanet for a million FFP2-type masks for frontline staff by Potočnik,a member of a government task force for the purchase of PPE, and another member of the task force, Mitja Terče, according to Gale.

Gale said he had talked to Počivalšek several times and had been told to "be cooperative, listen to Terče". The minister himself, however, "avoided being held to account". "You will not find any consent or signature by the minister or the secretary on any contract, the gentlemen decided to shift this to others."

Gale also believes that Zakrajšek, who has recently been replaced as agency director, was pressured into resigning.

Počivalšek responded today, saying that the story was an orchestrated "hunt on my head". He acknowledged things could have been done better, but he said the situation at the start of the epidemic had been unprecedented.

"Neither me nor my colleagues have lobbied or politically influenced decisions in any way," Počivalšek said, adding that the goal had been to speed up procedures and secure protective equipment for the frontline at a time when it was needed the most.

"If employees at the agency had worked at the same pace ... as they had been used to in peacetime, we would still not have emergency equipment to this day," Počivalšek said.

He sees no need to resign over the accusations. "I don't see a scandal in the equipment purchasing, I see work well done," he said.

Terče issued a written statement to TV Slovenija saying he had acted transparently and in the interest of the country. He denied pressuring anyone.

Gale mentioned several other current and former officials as exerting pressure, including former MEP and prime minister Lojze Peterle, who intervened with the agency for the supply of masks from Germany, offering a small company owned by his daughter as a go-between.

Damijan Jaklin, state secretary at the Defence Ministry, the head of an interdepartmental task force reviewing offers for the supply of equipment, pushed for a contract with Inovatio, a Maribor-based company. "For this provider in particular the pressure was unusual," Gale said.

Marjan Podobnik, the president of the non-parliamentary People's Party (SLS), pressured the agency's director to conclude a deal with Dobnik Trade, a small company from Slovenska Bistrica. Gale said he had threatened the director that he would lose his job.

Another company that the agency was pressured into signing a contract with is Acron, which has been in the spotlight in recent weeks because the mother of Defence Minister Matej Tonin is a senior employee there.

Acron has signed several contracts with the agency worth roughly EUR 30 million, with Gale saying that Acron had turned out to be a reliable supplier but had "always been a privileged supplier".

Tonin has repeatedly denied intervening on behalf of Acron and has asked the Commission for the Prevention of Corruption to look into the deals.

Yesterday, before the report aired, the opposition Marjan Šarec List (LMŠ) said it would file a no-confidence motion against Počivalšek, however, the only other party to support this was the opposition Left.

This has meanwhile changed, as the opposition Social Democrats (SD) and the Alenka Bratušek Party (SAB) have also backed the plan. The LMŠ said today that a constructive no-confidence vote against the entire government was also possible but would be hard to pull off.

The LMŠ called on Tonin to resign as well, while the defence minister said this morning that many of the issues raised in the report had been news to him.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Janša tweeted that the government had ordered reports from all bodies involved in PPE procurement, which will also show how much PPE Slovenia had when his government had taken over from the team led by Marjan Šarec just over a month ago.

Janša said the reports would be sent to the National Assembly, while Tonin, is a statement for commercial broadcaster Kanal A, said that the reports would also be sent to investigative authorities. Once it is established what had happened, accountability will be demanded, Tonin added.

Today, reports suggested that Gale had been assigned police protection but this has been denied by the police. It prompted, however, Transparency International Slovenija to call on the authorities not only to examine the contentious procedures, but also to protect whistleblowers.

STA, 9 December 2019 - Compared to the EU average, Slovenian companies are more convinced that corruption is a widespread phenomenon in the country, according to a Eurobarometer survey, with the share of such companies in Slovenia standing at 90%, compared to 63% in the entire EU.

The survey, sponsored by the European Commission and published on International Anti-Corruption Day, shows that the perception of corruption has increased in Slovenia in the last two years.

While two years ago 77% of the surveyed companies said corruption was a widespread phenomenon in the country, this share increased to 90% this year.

The share of those who think that corruption is a rare occurrence has meanwhile dropped from 9% to 6%, and the share of those who could not tell has dropped from 14% to 4%.

However, the discrepancy between the perception and experience of corruption remains very high.

As many as 96% of the Slovenian companies polled answered in the negative to the question whether someone from the state bodies had requested or expected a present, favour or additional money for key documents and permits.

This is 11 percentage points less than in 2017, the survey notes, adding that only 4% of the companies said they knew at least one such case, which is 4 percentage points less than two years ago.

Slovenian companies are meanwhile more convinced that corruption was what prevented them for winning a public contract in the last three years. The share of such companies stands at 50% or 6 percentage points more than in 2017.

On the other hand, 41% of the surveyed companies believe that this was not the case, down five percentage points.

Slovenian companies are sceptical about the prospects of corruption prevention, with the share of companies in Slovenia which believe that the police are not likely to catch corrupt persons or companies or take measures against them.

As many as 70% of the surveyed companies in Slovenia believe that perpetrators of corrupt acts, even if arrested, would not be indicted, and 75% think that courts would not impose high fines or prison sentences on them.

But corruption is apparently not among the biggest problem for companies in Slovenia and the EU, as it is close to the bottom of the list along cronyism and access to financial sources.

Topping the list are tax rates, the fast-changing legislation and complicated administrative procedures.

The survey was carried out between 30 September and 9 October among 180 Slovenian companies.

All our stories on corruption can be found here