Necenzurirano suits illustrate the cost of SLAPPs in Slovenia

Primož Cirman, Vesna Vukovic and Tomaž Modic of necenzurirano.si

Slovenian journalist Primož Cirman knows first-hand the financial and psychological cost of being the subject of a SLAPP suit.

“Being a target of SLAPP … takes a toll on you, your family and your work due to the unprecedented amount of days and hours that are necessary to deal with the matter. The goal is to stigmatize you in the eyes of people who see you as a criminal because court notices keep coming into your mailbox,” he said.

Cirman, along with his colleagues Vesna Vukovic and Tomaž Modic, have been bombarded with 39 SLAPPs - for their investigative reporting, which appears on the site Necenzurirano. The SLAPPs take the form of criminal defamation suits filed by Rok Snežič, an unofficial financial advisor to former Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Janša.

Three-term Prime Minister Janša, a populist figure who had been vocal in his support of Hungary’s President Victor Orban and former US President Trump, was voted out of office in May 2022.

Over the course of several years, the three journalists had looked into Snežič’s financial dealings and his alleged involvement with an illegal loan to Janša’s SDS Party, which originated in Bosnia Herzegovina. Since January 2020, developments in the investgation have been published on necenzurirano.si, an online publication set up by the three journalists themselves.

Snežić, who runs a tax consultancy, claims that that the articles have caused damage to his reputation. He has previous convictions for fraud, tax evasion and money laundering and is currently under investigation by anti-money laundering and law enforcement agencies in Slovenia and Bosnia.

In Slovenia, a proven case of criminal defamation can result in a fine or imprisonment of up to a year.

The legal actions were triggered by a 2020 Necenzurirano investigation into the financial affairs of then Prime Minister Janez Janša. He left office in May this year.

In this case, – who met the three-time Premier while both were in jail - Janša for corruption and Snežič for tax evasion.

Cirman said that victory in court wasn't the primary goal for Snežić, or others who bring SLAPP suits against reporters, rather he felt the main aim was to kill the story and intimidate the messenger, and to send a message to other journalists not to pursue similar lines of inquiry themselves.

“In our case, it's especially brutal because Snežič's goal is not to win lawsuits but only to buy time and drain us.

“Every SLAPP has two goals: to kill a story and to kill a media that published this story. So far Snežič wasn't able to destroy our media. However, he did kill the story because unfortunately no other Slovenian media has run this for the past two years.

“You can say he has already succeeded and also shown a way to other powerful people how to treat journalists that write stories about them.”

One of the ironies of the situation is that part of the journalists’ investigation into Snežič’s affairs found that his claimed income is a modest salary from a company owned by his wife.

“Even if we win all lawsuits, there's a strong chance we won't be able to repay our costs because he's broke on paper,” said Cirman. None of which alleviates the costs faced by the journalists whose ability to work has been affected by being subjected to SLAPPs.

The 39 defamation suits against Necenzurirano have received attention outside Slovenia as an example of the growing problem of SLAPPs in Europe, including by the Council of Europe.

The Vienna-based International Press Institute has written that the Slovenia SLAPPs represent “one of the most brazen uses anywhere in the European Union in recent years … a form of abusive litigation used by powerful actors to harass media outlets working in the public interest.”

In its survey of SLAPP cases filed across the European Union and the wider Council of Europe area, the Coalition Against SLAPPS in Europe (CASE) noted that

“Those who take a critical stance against the government of Slovenia are not only targeted by legal actions, they are also at risk of being the targets of smear campaigns and online harassment, at times perpetrated by the media outlets that support the ruling political party,”

Blueprint for Free Speech is part of Pioneering AntiSLAPP Training for Freedom of Expression (PATFox), a European Commission-funded project which is developing Europe’s first Anti-SLAPP curriculum and training lawyers in 11 EU member states – including Slovenia.