A Conversation with Tomáš Madleňák

Nov 18

Listen to the full episode:

Time Codes:
3:59 Rebel souls in northern Slovakia
6:13 How mountains shape mindsets
7:19 Wide-open borders and the travel bug
9:21 Disappointment at the Foreign Ministry
11:18 The murder of Ján Kuciak
13:50 Vilifying journalists makes violence easy
16:02 Slovak oligarchs & Marián Kočner
20:47 Corruption erodes faith in democracy
23:54 Investigations preserve truth for the future
25:29 ‘Shocking’ speed of U.S. norm-dismantling
26:47 Autocracy travels from east to west
29:09 U.S. democracy no longer the role model
30:26 Read the news but don’t burn out
32:20 Keep talking — but keep it factual
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Corruption destroys you slowly or all at once

Everyone’s life has an inflection point – a moment in history that inalterably changes their history and divides their timeline into the Before times and the After. For Tomáš Madleňák, that time came in February 2018, when Slovak investigative reporter Ján Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kušnírová were shot dead in their home in a mafia-style hit. It was the first time a journalist had been killed since Slovakia’s post-communist independence, and it sent a brutal message that journalists in the European Union’s youngest democracies were not safe from deadly violence.

The murder sparked massive protests in Slovakia that led to the resignation of the country’s entrenched prime minister, populist Robert Fico. They also inspired Tomáš to step away from a promising career in foreign policy and focus on issues closer to home by becoming an investigative reporter himself. Now a journalist with the Investigative Center of Ján Kuciak, Tomáš focuses on cross-border crime, money laundering, and high-profile corruption cases including the financial crimes of Marián Kočner, the oligarch at the center of Kuciak’s investigations and the man accused of ordering the journalist’s killing. Tomáš’s book, Stories From the Captured State, documents the web of Kočner’s financial crimes that were uncovered over the course of Kuciak’s murder trial.

Tomáš describes how corruption in Slovakia has drained faith in democracy among many of his compatriots, fueled rose-tinted nostalgia for the days of communism, and enabled the return of Fico for his fourth term as prime minister in 2023. He also observes how Fico has capitalized on an ever-evolving strategy for consolidating power – a playbook that has been passed from Russia and Turkey to Hungary and now Slovakia, growing more efficient at each transition. Slovakia has seen a precipitous drop in global corruption rankings since Fico’s return, which has witnessed the rapid abolition of the special prosecutor’s office and the national criminal agency responsible for fighting financial crime.

Born in 1991, a period of immense change for the post-communist countries of Eastern and Central Europe, Tomáš says he once looked to Western Europe and the United States for examples his country’s young democracy could follow. But he now finds himself “shocked” by the overnight dismantling of U.S. checks and balances, and worries the country that was his former role model is now looking east for an autocratic role model of its own. It’s a challenging time for journalists, but Tomáš has no regrets. “If we give up, if we say it’s not worth it, the corrupt people will just win. And this country will stop being a democracy,” he says. “I’m here to make sure that the information survives no matter what.”