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The Supreme Court of Slovakia sentenced the murderer of the Slovak investigative journalist Jan Kuciak to 25 years in prison on Wednesday.
As court spokeswoman Alexandra Vazanova confirmed to the dpa news agency, this ruling by the appellate body against ex-soldier Miroslav Marcek is final and can no longer be appealed.
In January 2020, he confessed to having killed Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kusnirova in February 2018 by being shot in the head and chest.
With its decision, the Supreme Court corrected a milder judgment by the special court responsible for organized crime in Pezinok near Bratislava.
The judges there sentenced Marcek to 23 years in April because they credited him as mitigating the fact that he confessed and provided the investigators with valuable information on suspected clients.
The public prosecutor's office, however, insisted on the maximum penalty because of the seriousness of the crime and now enforced it on appeal.
The investigative journalist Kuciak had reported on the shady business of the entrepreneur Marian Kocner, but also on other entanglements in politics and business.
A report about possible connections between Italian mafia clans and Slovak government employees, published only after his death, triggered mass demonstrations against corruption and led to the resignation of the then government.
The millionaire Kocner had repeatedly denied having ordered and paid for the act.
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Kocner, who was accused of having commissioned the murder, and alleged accomplices were acquitted in the main trial in early September for lack of evidence.
Against this, the prosecution appealed.
The Supreme Court will hear this on December 15th and 16th.
Since 2015, Kuciak has worked as an editor in the investigative team of the news portal aktuellity.sk, which belongs to Ringier Axel Springer Slovakia, a joint venture between Axel Springer SE (WELT, "Bild") and the Swiss company Ringier AG.