Apr 28, 2026 at 10:00 p.m
The head of the Football Association is drowning in debt.
Ján Kováčik. (source: TASR)
Even though the name of the president of the Slovak Football Association (SFZ), Ján Kováčik, has been inflected mainly with the case of the mega-purchase of mobile phones, these are not his only problems.
Not only SFZ has financial difficulties, but also Kováčik himself.
The situation has escalated to such an extent that execution proceedings are being conducted against him. And among the injured are the names of well-known businessmen.
Kováčik paid one of them shortly after INDEX contacted him with questions. “Everything is settled,” said Kováčik, adding that it has not yet been updated in the execution register.
He made money on Marquis
For decades, Ján Kováčik has been perceived as a successful manager who became visible as a co-owner of Markíza television. He was also behind the company Forza, which organized the Miss and Slávik events.
“My main business became entertainment. I don’t like to use the word show business,” he recalled in 2008 in an interview for Hospodárske noviny.
During this period, Kováčik befriended Markíza founder Pavlo Rusk and was also considered an influential man behind his ANO political party. Kováčik was even supposed to participate in the post-election coalition negotiations.
In 2007, Kováčik made the business of his life when he sold his stake in Markíza.
According to media reports, the American CME paid 1.9 billion Slovak crowns for the 20 percent stake controlled by Media Invest. Kováčik’s partner in Media Invest was the big businessman Milan Fiľo.
Kováčik was not so successful in other businesses. In 2007, he sold the meat processing plant PM Zbrojníky, which had financial problems. It was bought by the Penta financial group.
In 2018, the operation of the Forza company ended in bankruptcy. It was sent into bankruptcy by Privatbanka (also owned by Pente). Even Kováčik’s publishing house TV Tip, which was behind the weekly newspapers Markíza and Žurnál, failed.
Ján Kováčik. (source: Hey You)
A billion dollar empire?
In 2019, Kováčik claimed that he was only doing business occasionally. “They are more or less such ad hoc cases that I see an opportunity, realize it, buy it, do some restructuring and try to move it on,” he told Trend.
Currently, you can find Kováčik’s name in the companies R-Media and Art Film Fest. His activities abroad have much larger dimensions. As the Czech portal Seznam Zprávy pointed out in 2025, he applied to the Hong Kong-based company Gilmoore & Clay.
At that time, it stated on its website that, in addition to Hong Kong, it operates in Cyprusin the United Kingdom, PanamaEl Salvador and the Czech Republic, while its assets reach 1.3 billion US dollars.
“I am the end user of the benefits of the investment holding company Gilmoore & Clay Limited in Hong Kong, which operates through subsidiaries in various countries around the world. Its content is mainly business and investment activity in various economically interesting sectors,” Kováčik told Seznam Správy.
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He also considered the value of the group to be a relevant figure: “The said amount registered in the Hong Kong Commercial Register constitutes the total assets, including my financial resources provided to the company. I can assure you that the registered assets of the company in the form of securities and their stated total nominal value are completely legal, and therefore they have also been registered.”
With executions on the neck
This information has a contrasting effect compared to the events that are happening behind the scenes. On the one hand, Kováčik talks about billions in assets, on the other hand, he is facing foreclosures.
