ONE DOWN, ONE DIRTY: CORRUPTION AND INCOMPETENCE TAINT

UNCLAS BRATISLAVA 000072 SIPDIS VIENNA FOR DHS/ICE JAMES PLITT DHS FOR OFFICE OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS AND VISA WAIVER PROGRAM MARC FREY AND GIANFRANCO CORTI E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: CVIS PGOV LO PREL UP PINR SUBJECT: ONE DOWN, ONE DIRTY: CORRUPTION AND INCOMPETENCE TAINT SLOVAK BORDER POLICE REF: (A) 09 Bratislava 51; (B) 09 Bratislava 428 ¶1. (U) Summary. In the past six weeks, the chief of Slovakia's Border and Alien Police (BAP) and its senior officer at the eastern (Ukrainian) border have both fallen from grace, the former taking responsibility for a fiasco involving explosives secreted in luggage by the bomb squad, the latter for allegedly taking bribes. The temporarily headless BAP bureau is of great importance to Slovakia's commitments under the Visa Waiver Program (VWP) and is a close collaborator on other U.S. priorities. End Summary. ¶2. (U) In early January, Slovakia scored its 15 minutes of international fame as a result of a botched bomb-detection exercise. An officer working with sniffer dogs at Poprad Airport hid live explosives in the luggage of a Slovak who worked in Ireland. The officer failed to retrieve it after the exercise, and through a series of errors, the luggage made it to Dublin, where three days later Irish police were able to track it down. In the ensuing uproar, Interior Minister Kalinak survived calls for his head but BAP chief Col. Tibor Mako took the fall. He has been re-assigned within the Ministry of Interior, which controls the BAP, but his career seems to be effectively at an end. ¶3. (U) Mako was an important Embassy and DHS contact in the lead-up to Slovakia's entry into the VWP in November 2008. In September 2009, he hosted Embassy Consul, Poloff, and DHS/ICE attachi on a tour of Slovakia's border with Ukraine (ref B). The tour started at the BAP headquarters in Sobrance , commanded by Lt. Col. Miroslav Uchnar. Uchnar accompanied Mako on the tour of border and to the ensuing official lunch. Having heard rumors and specific information (ref A) more than a year ago that there was an investigation into malfeasance by an immigration official in the East, we asked Uchnar directly about internal controls during the day's conversations. He told us that there had been no recent arrests or investigations in recent years, and showed little interest in the subject. ¶4. (U) Last week, Uchnar, who as head of the BAP in Sobrance was in charge of 880 policemen and the country's most sensitive border, was accused of accepting a bribe and abusing his public office. He is suspected of taking a bribe of EUR 2,600 as a reward for securing a job for a 32-year old woman in his own Border and Alien Police Bureau, according to news reports. It is noteworthy that the suspect BAP official we were told about in ref A was not Uchnar - we have heard nothing new on that case. ¶5. (U) Comment. It would be surprising if an officer of Uchnar's length of service just decided to begin a life of corruption now, given the well-known and lucrative smuggling of cigarettes and other contraband over the border from Ukraine. One newspaper reported that on the Ukrainian side, officers pay EUR 10,000 to secure a job on the border, which they swiftly make back. There have been low-level officers fired for corruption in the past, but no one near Uchnar's stature has been arrested in recent years. We will be anxious to learn what emerges in the coming investigation by the police into one of their own. If the allegations are limited to smuggling of goods, it will be a problem for Slovakia and the EU. If any of the rumors of corruption and abuse of the visa and residency permit system are substantiated, we will want to see some progress on cleaning house in light of Slovakia's scheduled VWP re-certification later this year. End Comment. EDDINS