Petrzalka Mayor Hrcka Stepping Down over Fraud Uncovered at Municipal Office

Bratislava, May 16 (TASR) - Mayor of Bratislava's borough of Petrzalka Juraj Hrcka held a news conference on Friday to announce his intention to step down from his post as of May 31. Hrcka is in this way accepting political responsibility for the fraud that was recently uncovered at the municipal office. According to the information known so far, one of the office's employees had been unlawfully sending money to his own accounts since at least 2023, causing damage of more than €2.7 million to the municipality in this way. The mayor explained his decision to resign by referring to the fact that it took so long to uncover the fraud. "I'm very sorry, very ashamed of it. But I won't take it back," stated Hrcka. Although he himself doesn't feel guilty, the fraud was taking place for a very long time and the municipality has been deprived of a great deal of money, so he feels he must accept political responsibility for it. The mayor spoke about a huge failure at the municipal office that has damaged the whole municipality. He mentioned several individual failures, as no one in the office noticed the fraudulent conduct the whole time, and neither inspections, nor audits revealed anything. It subsequently emerged that in 2023 a former payroll department employee illegally transferred some €400,000 to his accounts in 2023, and as much as around €1.3 million in 2024. Paradoxically, these are years in which the municipality posted record-high surpluses. The mayor stressed that the failures didn't occur solely at the municipal office. They only found out that something was wrong in early May, when one of the banks warned them to check their accounts, as it didn't like the look of them. However, the municipal office was unaware that another bank had cancelled dozens of its accounts earlier this year, as it considered them to be high-risk, and none of the competent authorities or institutions had alerted it. If the municipal office had started to address the problem as early as in January, the damage could have been almost €1 million lower. The former employee sent smaller sums to his accounts at first, later increasing them, with the last payment amounting to €220,000. At one time he reportedly had more than 150 accounts with eight banks, and several dozen with one of them. He said that he stole the money because he "owed money to certain people". The former employee, who had been working for the municipal office since September 2020, was recently detained by the police and is being questioned. The municipal office has already fired two of his direct superiors. The mayor would view it as "a small miracle" if the money was returned to the municipality. The Petrzalka municipal office will be led by its vice-mayor Iveta Jancokova as of June 1. ko/df