{"id":831,"date":"2018-03-13T08:00:26","date_gmt":"2018-03-13T07:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/czechpoints.com\/?p=831"},"modified":"2019-07-11T16:36:58","modified_gmt":"2019-07-11T14:36:58","slug":"jan-kuciaks-final-article-the-model-the-mafia-and-the-murderers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/czechpoints.com\/jan-kuciaks-final-article-the-model-the-mafia-and-the-murderers\/","title":{"rendered":"Jan Kuciak’s Final Investigation: The Model, the Mafia, and the Murderers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Murdered Slovak Investigative Journalist Jan Kuciak’s final article below originally appeared on OOCRP<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

When the bodies of journalist Jan Kuciak and his fianc\u00e9 Marina Kusnirova, both 27, were found this Sunday \u2013 each killed by a single shot in their newly purchased home \u2013 Slovak journalists were shocked. Slovakia\u2019s top politicians have recently been criticized for openly expressing hostility to independent journalists, but no reporter in the country has ever before been killed for their work.<\/p>\n

Police said that the couple had been killed by one or more professional hitmen and that their deaths were likely in retaliation for one of Kuciak\u2019s stories. Slovak media speculated wildly that the youthful Kuciak had been done in by a local businessman who had threatened him, or perhaps by corrupt government officials.<\/p>\n

In fact, Kuciak had been working with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), the Czech Center for Investigative Journalism (CCIJ), and the Investigative Reporting Project Italy (IRPI) on what may have turned out to be a far more dangerous story: An investigation that delved into the infiltration into Slovakia of the \u2018Ndrangheta mafia, one of the world\u2019s most powerful and fearsome criminal groups.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe \u2018Ndrangheta holds a dominant position in the cocaine market in Europe, and is involved in many other criminal fields, including weapons trafficking, fraud, rigging of public tenders, corruption, intimidation, extortion and environmental crime,\u201d according to a Europol Threat Assessment of Italian Organized Crime published in June 2013.<\/p>\n

Because Kuciak and his colleagues had not finished the story, OCCRP and his publication, Aktuality.sk, had not yet published it. At the time of his killing, he was continuing to collect records on men considered by Italian police to be extremely dangerous.<\/p>\n

But after the murder, information about the subject of his reporting leaked out. OCCRP and Aktuality.sk are now publishing Kuciak\u2019s uncompleted story to set the record straight and minimize the danger for the reporters who have worked on it.<\/p>\n

Kuciak and his colleagues started their investigation by looking into the hiring of Maria Troskova, then 27, by Slovakia\u2019s Prime Minister Robert Fico as an assistant. Fico hired the former Miss Universe contestant and model (dubbed \u201cthe sexy assistant\u201d by Slovak media) despite her relative lack of political experience. His press department had refused to release her job description, to clarify her position in government, or to say whether she got a security clearance.<\/p>\n

But while looking into this story, the reporting team uncovered an even bigger one. As it turns out, Troskova used to be a business partner of Antonino Vadala, 42, an Italian man who now lives in Slovakia and owns a network of agricultural companies in the east of the country.<\/p>\n

In her mid-20s, Troskova joined with Vadala to co-found and co-own a Slovak company called GIA Management, which is registered as taking part in a wide spectrum of businesses, including real estate, construction, packaging, and photography. She left the company after just under a year.<\/p>\n

An Assistant to Powerful Men<\/h2>\n

Troskova got her start in the business world as an assistant to Pavol Rusko, a former politician and once the co-owner of the television station TV Markiza. Rusko got into trouble recently when he was detained for allegedly hiring an assassin to kill his business partner in the late 1990s.<\/p>\n

Troskova was at GIA Management when she met Viliam Jasan, a former member of the Slovak parliament with the ruling Smer-SD party who currently chairs the Crisis Management and State Security Department. Jasan hired Troskova as his deputy assistant.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s when she was introduced to \u2013 and was hired by \u2013 party leader and prime minister Robert Fico.<\/p>\n

But Vadala turned out to be more than just an enterprising immigrant.<\/p>\n

Mother Calabria<\/h2>\n

In March 2017, the Antimafia prosecutors\u2019 office in Italy\u2019s Calabria region, along with the anti-drug unit of the Fiscal Guard of Catanzaro, filed several arrest warrants after a lengthy investigation.<\/p>\n

Codenamed \u201cGerry\u201d (after a nickname one of the drug brokers used in text messages), the police were looking at cocaine trafficked by a cartel of five \u2018Ndrangheta families from Latin America to Italy.<\/p>\n

In the investigation, which is still ongoing, Antonino Vadala was named as a potential new cocaine broker for the cartel, to replace others who had been caught in a drug bust.<\/p>\n

But his ties to the group, reporters discovered, go back further than that.<\/p>\n

It started in a picturesque place on the very toe of Italy\u2019s boot: Antonino Vadala\u2019s hometown, Bova Marina. This is where he spent the early part of his life, before later emigrating to Slovakia along with other members of his family.<\/p>\n

But the town is not known only for its beauty. It is the home of the Vadala clan, a notorious \u2018Ndrangheta family who, according to court records, have been responsible for at least 25 murders while controlling the cocaine trade and enjoying direct ties to a Colombian drug cartel.<\/p>\n

The clan is run by a boss named Domenico Vadala, with whom Antonino Vadala is not known to have any close family relationship.<\/p>\n

But it was here, sixteen years ago, where Italian police would first link him with the \u2018Ndrangheta for helping to hide a fugitive from another clan, the Libri-Zindato, who was on the run from the law. (Though often viewed as a single organized crime group, the \u2018Ndrangheta are in fact a network of clans spread throughout the south of the country.)<\/p>\n

In 2001, police wiretaps between Antonino Vadala and a Libri-Zindato boss named Francesco Zindato caught the two men discussing the logistical arrangements for hiding the fugitive drug trafficker \u2013 later found out to be a killer \u2013 in Vadala\u2019s home in Bova Marina.<\/p>\n

A warrant was issued for Vadala\u2019s arrest, along with 12 other men who were charged with crimes ranging from drug trafficking, robbery, and extortion to illegal possession of weapons.<\/p>\n

Some of the men were arrested, convicted of their crimes, and sentenced to prison terms. But, having already moved to Slovakia, Vadala escaped arrest, and the charges against him were later dropped.<\/p>\n

A Famous Murder<\/h2>\n

The fugitive Vadala helped hide was a drug trafficker named Domenico \u201cMico\u201d Ventura. He was due to be detained as part of a police investigation into the \u2018Ndrangheta when he escaped and went into hiding in Bova Marina.<\/p>\n

Ventura was made famous years later by a\u00a0video<\/a>\u00a0that was leaked to the Carabinieri military police in 2012. It showed him shooting another member of the clan in cold blood in a countryside home. His weapon of choice \u2013 a type of sawed-off shotgun called a lupara \u2013 is typically associated with mafia murders. He was sentenced to life in prison.<\/p>\n

In other police wiretaps taken as part of the same investigation, Vadala was recorded being asked by Zindato to go to Rome along with two of the boss\u2019s most trusted men to \u201cpunish\u201d (physically) an unknown man who had \u201cdamaged the clan.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s clear that those who took part in the punishment trip ordered by the boss had to be strongly affiliated with the interests and activities of the clan,\u201d wrote the judge. The records don\u2019t show whether he actually made the trip.<\/p>\n

Reporters were still collecting additional information about Vadala \u2013 as well as about Troskova\u2019s role, if any, as the link between him and the Prime Minister\u2019s office \u2013 when Jan Kuciak was murdered.<\/p>\n

Vadala\u2019s lawyer had no comment for this story when contacted by reporters in November.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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