BERDISOVÁ, L. - DLUGOŠOVÁ, Z. - MAZÚR, J.: Coping with Threema: How do Lawyers Perceive Their Biggest Corruption Scandal? Právny obzor, 103, 2020, special issue, pp. 63-86.
Keywords:
professional ethics, judicial integrity, trust in the justice system, crisis of legal professionThough with their high wrongs I am struck to th' quick, Yet, with my nobler reason, 'gainst my fury Do I take part: the rarer action is In virtue than in vengeance: they being penitent, The sole drift of my purpose doth extend Not a frown further. Go, release them, Ariel. My charms I'll break, their senses I'll restore, And they shall be themselves. William Shakespeare, The Tempest, 1611
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Introduction
When Prospero, the protagonist of Shakespeare's play, wants to avenge evil deeds committed against him, he orchestrates a tempest that wrecks the ship of his malefactors. However, at the end of the play, he changes his plan and merely strives to understand his suffering. At this point, the villains begin to understand what they had caused. It is then revealed that the ship was only wrecked by magic, and it is magically restored. The story closes with a catharsis as all of the main characters return home, and the love thrives between Miranda, daughter of Prospero, and Ferdinand, son of his former enemy.
Shakespeare's plays rarely have such a happy ending. Violence and deadly bloodshed are more common. The Shakespearean quip 'let's kill all the lawyers' from Henry VI became quite well known. It is also known that many of Shakespeare's plays pose interesting legal questions that lawyers like to analyse, especially
The Merchant of Venice
and
Measure for Measure.
In the present article, we use the Tempest motive as a background for analysing events in Slovakia between 2019 and 2020 in connection with what became known as the Threema affair or simply Threema. Indeed, the affair's major consequence was the arrest of thirteen judges, including a former Deputy Justice Minister, one insolvency administrator and one attorney. The police named this operation the 'Tempest'. Of course, unlike Shakespeare's Tempest, no one knows yet whether there will be any catharsis. Nonetheless, we hope that the legal professions will see the crisis as a chance to rethink their role and purpose, and that
'they shall become themselves".
The outlined survey results may clarify whether our hope is realistic.The paper has merely descriptive aspirations. Its main goal is to introduce the preliminary results of a survey that sought to gauge lawyers' reactions to the Threema. The survey was carried out in October and November 2020 in the form of a questionnaire distributed among judges, attorneys, prosecutors, notaries, enforcement officers, law professors and law students.
In the first part of the paper, we sum up the most relevant events related to the Threema communication and subsequent reactions. The second part of the article is dedicated to the methodology of the survey. In the third part, the results of the survey are presented.
1. What is Threema?
In many countries, Threema became popular as one of the most secure mobile phone applications, allowing for encrypted communication and collecting only a limited number of metadata. However, in Slovakia, the name of the application bears an extremely negative connotation and is even closely connected with the investigation of the murder of investigative journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kušnírová. Between 2017 and 2018, Marian Kočner, a controversial businessman who stands accused of ordering the murder,
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exchanged messages with several lawyers, including judges and prosecutors, via Threema to manipulate their decisions and obstruct justice.
The Slovak police seized Marian Kočner's mobile phone while investigating the murder. With Europol's assistance, the police was able to decode saved messages that Kočner had sent through Threema between September 2017 and May 2018. The messages obtained from Kočner's phone suggest that Kočner
inter alia
extensively discussed cases with judges, prosecutors and lawyers to gain sensitive information, to openly manipulate police and prosecutorial or court decisions in exchange for bribes, to lobby for some judges' interests through his web of contacts or even to give orders to specific judges how to proceed in their decision-making.Kočner's Threema messages suggest that he regularly co-ordinated with businessman Norbert Bodor to arrange police database searches to obtain extensive personal data of selected journalists, investigators, prosecutors or judges. At the same time, Bodor appeared to serve as a liaison between Special Prosecutor Dušan Kováčik and top police officers, including former Police Presi