Slovenian President under fire over crash, Russian travel friend

Slovenian President Nataša Pirc Musar has been facing a severe backlash after being injured in a traffic accident. While her office has been accused of trying to withhold information about the incident from the public, indications have been raised that she may face an impeachment motion over a Russian friend she travelled with.

Pirc Musar suffered a fractured collarbone in the accident inside the Kastelec motorway tunnel above the port city of Koper on 31 July while travelling in a motorcade from her holiday in Croatia to the Pogi Challenge charity event organised by the world's top cyclist Tadej Pogačar in Komenda, north of Ljubljana, CE Report quotes The Slovenia Times.

Information slow to trickle in

The public was not informed about her being involved in the accident until the next day, after her office reacted to unofficial media reports. The office said that she sustained "light injuries" and spent the night at hospital in the coastal town of Izola before being discharged to recuperate at home.

Two days later, on 3 August, after social media were buzzing with speculation, her office revealed that the president sustained a clavicle fracture and that she travelled with the chauffeur, a female security guard and two female friends in the van that crashed into an escort vehicle in front of it. It said one of her friends sustained serious injuries but had also been discharged from hospital.

On the same day the police said the cause of the accident, which closed down the Kastelec tunnel on the A1 motorway for three hours, was failure to maintain a safe distance. Since the driver is a police officer, the police referred the case to the Specialised State Prosecutor's Office, suspecting him of negligence.

On 4 August Pirc Musar admitted on TV that she did not wear a seatbelt at the time of the accident.

"This is my biggest mistake and I sincerely regret it," she said in interviews aired by the public broadcaster RTV Slovenija and commercial broadcaster POP TV.

Commenting on criticism that the public had not been immediately informed of the accident, she said that it would not have been wise to inform the public until they had information about her condition.

"I hope the public will not hold that against me," she said, adding that she had not informed her husband or members of her office about the accident until late morning the day after.

She rejected accusations that her security guards had not had enough rest, insisting that her motorcade had set off on time. She also admitted that one of her friends did not wear a seatbelt either, and said it was not against the rules to have friends travelling with her when approved by her security detail.

Focus turns on Russian travel companion

Scrutiny from the public and media, especially from the right-wing, soon shifted on the president's travel companions after it transpired that one of them was Victoria Krivolutskaya, a dual Russian-Slovenian citizen with close business ties to the president's family. Now, the president faced accusations of transporting a "Russian spy" in her official vehicle.

TV Slovenija cited unofficial sources in reporting that Peter Jambrek, a former Constitutional Court judge and one of the authors of the Slovenian Constitution, was drafting a motion to impeach the president on the grounds that her socialising with Russian citizens is a threat to national security.

While Jambrek denied the report of him working on such a motion as "completely false", he did say the accident involving the president "raises numerous legal and constitutional questions that could lead to a situation of constitutional indictment".

He also said that in his view the "friendly association of the president with persons who are citizens of a country that seriously violates international law and the EU's foreign policy commitments, and for whom there is reasonable suspicion that they are demonstrably connected to the interests of both that foreign country and the direct business interests of [the president's] immediate family, raises the suspicion that all the circumstances as a whole give the appearance in the public of an alleged violation of her constitutional position."

Jurist Rajko Pirnat raised concern over information being concealed from the public, arguing in an interview with TV Slovenija that the president had an obligation to disclose all of the circumstances of her relationship with the Russian-Slovenian citizen. He pointed out that it was almost impossible to acquire Slovenian citizenship without the person renouncing their original citizenship.

President overwhelmed by "tsunami of misinformation"

The president's office described the potential impeachment motion as unfounded, while Pirc Musar herself said in a post on her Facebook profile on 9 August that the sheer idea of her possibly being subjected to an impeachment motion went beyond the boundaries of good taste.

"In the opinion of some, I shouldn't associate with foreign citizens at all," she said. According to the president, she and her friend, who also holds Russian citizenship, have been best friends for nearly 20 years, "and even this witch hunt won't change that".

Pirc Musar said her friend had obtained Slovenian citizenship under the same legal conditions as everyone else, as a top athlete. She said at the time the friend had also undergone a security check, as required by law as part of the citizenship application process.

Krivolutskaya is a bowler and in the past she had played on the same team as Pirc Musar.

In her latest Facebook post, the president also said that her accident "sparked a wave of speculation and a tsunami of misinformation" which she has been unable to stop. She said the situation was very hard for her, not only for her own sake but for the sake of "everyone who is going through this difficult ordeal with me".

Photo Instagram/natasa.pirc.musar