Slovakia’s prime minister, Robert Fico, has hit out at journalists questioning him about allegations that public procurement rules had been broken during the country’s EU presidency, describing them as “dirty, anti-Slovak prostitutes”. On Wednesday he stepped up his rhetoric, becoming angry when asked about allegations made on Sunday by Zuzana Hlávková and the anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International. “Some of you are dirty, anti-Slovak prostitutes, and I stand by my words,” Fico told journalists. “You don’t inform, you fight with the government.”He also said the accusations were a targeted attack to smear Slovakia’s EU presidency, which ends in December. Transparency International said on its website that “feigned public procurement” was a crime and that it had asked three watchdogs to look into the case, namely Slovakia’s public procurement bureau, its anti-monopoly bureau and its supreme audit office.

Source: The Guardian November 23, 2016 16:33 UTC