In Jan­u­ary 2018, Jan Ku­ci­ak and his fi­ancée Mar­ti­na Kušnírová were mur­dered at home in the vil­lage of Veľká Mača in Slo­va­kia. Jan was a jour­nal­ist. At the time of his death, he had un­veiled riv­et­ing proofs con­nect­ing min­is­ters, po­lice and judges to a mafia-linked oli­garch. Un­be­liev­able leaks of a stream of phone mes­sages point to of­fi­cials, in­clud­ing a for­mer prime min­is­ter, and sug­gest­ed that on nu­mer­ous oc­ca­sions, the for­mer prime min­is­ter met with the "en­tre­pre­neur" Mar­i­an Koc­n­er—whose phone is cur­rent­ly be­ing un­en­crypt­ed by the po­lice as he pines in prison await­ing tri­al for al­leged­ly plot­ting the as­sas­si­na­tion.

The bizarre homi­cide cat­a­pult­ed civ­il so­ci­ety groups in Slo­va­kia and the EU it­self to ad­mit that cor­rup­tion was en­dem­ic and soaked the high­est lev­els of the Slo­vak state. GRE­CO, the Coun­cil of Eu­rope's an­ti-cor­rup­tion body, re­cent­ly called for Slo­va­kia to ful­ly im­ple­ment all 16 of its ant-cor­rup­tion rec­om­men­da­tions, echo­ing the sen­ti­ments of the Com­mon­wealth Caribbean As­so­ci­a­tion of In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sions and An­ti-Cor­rup­tion Bod­ies (CCAICACB) that has urged In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sions and An­ti-Cor­rup­tion Bod­ies in the Caribbean to make rec­om­men­da­tions to their gov­ern­ments with a view to re­al­is­ing rein­vig­o­rat­ed po­lit­i­cal will, pub­lic sec­tor and na­tion­wide com­mit­ments, to con­tin­u­ous­ly com­bat cor­rup­tion.

GRE­CO flagged that three of its rec­om­men­da­tions have not been im­ple­ment­ed, all of which per­tain to mea­sures to im­prove trans­paren­cy by in­tro­duc­ing ap­pro­pri­ate stan­dards for MPs when deal­ing with lob­by­ists and third par­ties as well as the adop­tion of an en­force­able mech­a­nism to de­clare con­flicts of in­ter­est. An­oth­er six rec­om­men­da­tions were on­ly par­tial­ly im­ple­ment­ed. Slo­va­kia ranked 57th in Trans­paren­cy In­ter­na­tion­al's lat­est Cor­rup­tion Per­cep­tions In­dex with a score of 50 out of 100 — its worst score since 2013. Gabriel Sipos, di­rec­tor for Trans­paren­cy In­ter­na­tion­al in Slo­va­kia, not­ed that the mur­der of Jan and his part­ner re­sult­ed in some en­cour­ag­ing steps in­clud­ing the res­ig­na­tion and sen­tenc­ing of politi­cians and “en­tre­pre­neurs”, but it al­so un­der­scored the State's weak­ness to com­bat cor­rup­tion.

It is es­ti­mat­ed that the lev­el of cor­rup­tion in Caribbean coun­tries could be in the vicin­i­ty of 30 per cent of their re­spec­tive Gross Do­mes­tic Prod­ucts. Bod­ies to ac­knowl­edge cor­rup­tion per­cep­tion in­dices and to en­gage in­de­pen­dent in­tegri­ty agen­cies to work re­gion­al­ly to de­ter­mine strengths and chal­lenges will per­mit the CCAICACB to dis­sem­i­nate ob­jec­tive cor­rup­tion in­di­ca­tors to but­tress ef­forts fo­cused on Caribbean cor­rup­tion erad­i­ca­tion. One hope is that an­ti-cor­rup­tion bod­ies might soon be able to share da­ta and lists of per­sons of in­ter­est via har­monised strate­gies and prac­tices. The strength­en­ing of co­op­er­a­tion and the shar­ing of in­for­ma­tion along­side sta­tis­ti­cal mea­sures on the re­al cost of cor­rup­tion with peo­ple every­where will be ad­van­ta­geous to the or­di­nary man.

Civ­il so­ci­ety or­gan­i­sa­tions in Slo­va­kia have es­tab­lished the “Jan Ku­ci­ak In­ves­tiga­tive Cen­tre” based on the mod­el of the Czech Cen­tre for In­ves­tiga­tive Jour­nal­ism which unites and sup­ports jour­nal­ism projects fo­cused on re­veal­ing cor­rup­tion and in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­ised crime in more than 30 coun­tries on four con­ti­nents. Along the same lines, Pow­er­ful Ladies of Trinidad and To­ba­go (PLOTT), has host­ed a se­ries of events cen­tring on the shad­owy homi­cide of In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Dana See­ta­hal who was mur­dered on May 4, 2014,in Wood­brook while com­mut­ing to her home.

Zuzana Ca­puto­va is a Slo­va­kian di­vorcee and the moth­er of two chil­dren. She has ab­solute­ly no po­lit­i­cal ex­pe­ri­ence. She is 45. The mur­der of Jan made her fu­ri­ous. She de­cid­ed to of­fer her­self as a can­di­date for the pres­i­den­cy of Slo­va­kia. She framed her cam­paign as a strug­gle be­tween good and evil. She de­feat­ed the high-pro­file diplo­mat Maros Se­f­cov­ic who was nom­i­nat­ed by the gov­ern­ing Smer-SD par­ty led by Prime Min­is­ter Robert Fi­co. Fi­co him­self was forced to re­sign as prime min­is­ter fol­low­ing the leaked mes­sages that ev­i­denced count­less meet­ings be­tween the Slo­vak oli­garch and the for­mer prime min­is­ter.

An emerg­ing fea­ture of the Slo­va­kian mind­scape is wari­ness with old po­lit­i­cal par­ties and their “Grimm Tales” of cor­rup­tion. The shift and the slip­page to­wards new po­lit­i­cal par­ties like the Green Par­ty in Eu­rope is build­ing mo­men­tum as peo­ple be­come dis­en­chant­ed by cor­rup­tion and its as­so­ci­at­ed costs. Slo­va­kia is not a failed state, but it may be a fake democ­ra­cy—one that is prac­ti­cal­ly a mafia state where “en­tre­pre­neurs” and oli­garchs leave the poor with crumbs.

In an ef­fort to count the re­al cost of cor­rup­tion, the CCAICACB has asked Cari­com to put the thorny is­sue of graft and cor­rup­tion on their agen­da and to craft com­mis­sion­er har­monised leg­is­la­tion that takes in­to con­sid­er­a­tion the UN Con­ven­tion Against Cor­rup­tion (UN­CAC). The Ba­hami­an Prime Min­is­ter Hu­bert Min­nis stat­ed that cor­rup­tion re­mains a for­mi­da­ble chal­lenge. The un­em­ployed, the un­der­paid, and the self-em­ployed all have an in­ter­est in count­ing the re­al costs of cor­rup­tion.

The most re­cent Trans­paren­cy In­dex showed that Bar­ba­dos was rat­ed 68 out of a pos­si­ble 100 points, while Guyana scored 37. The UNDP’s pover­ty pro­gramme in­forms pol­i­cy and pro­gramme de­vel­op­ment through ad­vice, ad­vo­ca­cy and ini­tia­tives that con­tribute to the de­vel­op­ment of pover­ty re­duc­tion strate­gies that ad­dress pover­ty al­le­vi­a­tion. But if cor­rup­tion is erad­i­cat­ed, then there will be no need to have a pover­ty al­le­vi­a­tion pro­gramme. Log­i­cal­ly, the erad­i­ca­tion of cor­rup­tion will en­able states to de­liv­er to their peo­ple bet­ter, health­i­er and more pros­per­ous lives.