corruption | SLEEPING WITH PENGOVSKY

Fuck Around And TEŠ 6

In a development that surprised a grand total of zero people, due to the TEŠ 6 project, the Šoštanj coal power plant is going bust. Bankrupt. Done for. Broke. Insolvent, even. The government announced yesterday that it will draft an emergency bailout legislation to safeguard the plant’s thermal energy production, vital for some 35,000 residents in the region.

Fuck around and find out meme featuring TEŠ 6 as its centrepiece. — TEŠ 6 entering the find out phase

Such is the inglorious end of one of the largest and most expensive infrastructure projects since the completion of the motorway network. That is not to say that TEŠ (and, specifically, the infamous Unit 6) will be shutting down tomorrow. But the site and the connected “coal” mine will now be on life support, indefinitely. Lest they drag down half of the Slovenian energy sector with them.

The Passion of Andrej Vizjak

Minister of environment Andrej Vizjak is in a bit of a pickle. And by that pengovsky means he is in a big fucking mess. Namely, a recording surfaced in which Vizjak appears to offer a helping hand to Bojan Petan, an influential tycoon (think oligarch lite) and an overall shady dude, in the latter’s quest to obtain a majority stake in a government-controlled enterprise and thus avoid paying taxes.

A photograph of Slovenian minister of environment and spatial planning Andrej Vizjak — *Minister of environment, spatial planning and clandestine recordings Andrej Vizjak (source)*

The enterprise in question is Terme Čatež, a popular spa resort. Crucially, however, the conversation took place 14 years ago. So, not exactly the freshest of cuts, if you get my meaning. But even before this episode Vizjak was embroiled in enough shit to make this particular bag of canine excrement stick more than it might have done under different circumstances.

Wither Hojs

What pengovsky first predicted about a month and a half ago finally happened on Tuesday: Aleš Hojs resigned as interior minister. Hopefully, the door won’t hit him on his way out. Or even if it did, this scribe couldn’t really give a flying fuck.

Interior minister Aleš Hojs (left) and police chief Bojan Travner, both freshly out of their jobs *(source)*

With Hojs’ resignation a period of internal affairs portfolio being headed by an abrasive, belligerent and uniquely incompetent politician comes to an early end. But while the move was apparently triggered by a police raid chez minister of economy and SMC leader Zdravko Počivalšek over his role in the PPE procurement snafu, the root causes of Hojs getting canned run deeper.

Under Pressure

With 5000+ people protest-biking in the capital according to police estimates (press reports put the number at twice the range) and hundreds more in several other towns across the country, Muddy Hollows on Friday saw the largest anti-government protest since the Winter of Discontent.

*Part of the biking protest in Ljubljana as seen from the The Firm(tm)*

It was an outpouring of anger and frustration that had accumulated during the lockdown and are now boiling over. In part this is due to repeated executive overreach but mostly it was revelations of corruption and ineptitude at the highest levels of the government with regard to procurement of personal protective equipment and medical ventilators needed to curb the Covid-19 epidemic.

Parliament Reports President Pahor To Prosecution Over TEŠ 6

In what was not an entirely expected turn of events, the parliament yesterday unanimously adopted the committee report on the TEŠ 6 (Tower Six of Šoštanj coal power plant) corruption case. In addition, the parliament also voted to approve a virtually unprecedented move to report to the police the suspicion of gross negligence in execution of public office, a criminal offence carrying up to three-year prison sentence (Article 258 of the Penal Code).

TEŠ 6 (photo by yours truly)

The report concludes that the whole project was tailored to the needs of the coal lobby with specific MPs acting as stooges and pushing its agenda. The document blames every government from 2004 until 2012 for being needlessly careless and allowing the project to balloon and eventually derail. But while there is plenty of blame to go around, the report singles out and pins the largest share of the blame on then-PM Borut Pahor, his finance minister Franci Križanič and economy minister Matej Lahovnik for either actively looking the other way (Pahor) or even facilitating corruption (Križanič, Lahovnik) when it was already obvious the whole thing was going tits-up but disaster could still have been prevented.

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