Hlina: Special Agro Committee Session to Be Convened on Fafokan Boarding House

Bratislava, 29 January (TASR) - The opposition Freedom and Solidarity (SaS) party will seek to convene a special meeting of the parliamentary agriculture and environment committee over the Fafokan scandal, which involves a private luxury villa disguised as a guest house that was financed from funds of the EU and Agricultural Payment Agency (PPA), MP Alojz Hlina (SaS) told a news conference on Thursday, adding that both the agriculture minister and PPA chief will be invited. "We've agreed in operative terms to convene a special session of the parliamentary agriculture and environment committee. We'll let you know the date, as we're trying to coordinate it so that the Smer-SD and Voice-SD MPs aren't too busy at that time, as they're always busy. We'll set the date so that there will be an assumption that they can attend," said Hlina. "We'll convene the committee meeting and summon Agriculture Minister Richard Takac (Smer-SD) and PPA head Marek Cepko. We want them to explain what exactly they intend to do about this," said Hlina, adding that it would be a good idea to invite representatives of the European Commission or EU ambassadors to the meeting, as EU funds were used to finance the villa. The Let's Stop Corruption Foundation's communications specialist Norbert Chomistek reported on 27 January that PPA paid an additional almost €830,000 for the controversial Fafokan boarding house project in August 2025. It did so despite being aware that fake contracts had been submitted for the project and that the case had been under police investigation since 2021. The foundation has therefore turned to the Prosecutor-General's Office, asking it to examine the legality of PPA's actions, potential breaches of its internal rules and discrepancies in the officially published payment data. ko/df