Andrej Kiska

Early and personal life

Kiska was born in Poprad. He studied electrical engineering. His father was an active member of the ruling Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. He also applied for Communist party membership, but was rejected.^[4]

Kiska was married to Mária Kisková, an educator and politician from 1985 until 2001. They had two children, Andrej Kiska (1986) and Natália Kisková (1990).^[5] The couple divorced in 2001 after 18 years of marriage.

Kiska married his second wife, Martina Kisková, in 2003. The couple have three children- - Veronika (born 2005), Viktor (born 2009), and Martina (born July 2017 during his presidency).^[5]

Career

In 1990, after the Velvet Revolution, he moved to the United States.^[6] Later he founded Triangel and Quatro,^[7] two Slovakia-based hire-purchase companies that give the buyer the possibility to pay for goods in several installments over a number of months instead of paying the full price at once.^[8]

Tax authorities accused his co-owned company KTAG (with his brother Jaroslav) of tax non-compliance and under-payments, regarding expenses for his presidential campaign. The company eventually agreed to pay the taxes and a penalty.^[9][10]

Tax non-compliance and legal problems

Andrej Kiska’s companies were involved in a number of tax-non compliance issues. Unproperly reported income from various business activities resulted in a smaller VAT and Income tax payments. ^[11][12]

In his personal tax filing he did not disclose personal propagation before elections performed by his company as a non-cash income, but claimed that he paid for it. Eventually tax office confirmed he did not pay, did not report non-cash income, and his company did not report income from propagation activities but fully deducted all VAT. Remaining costs additionally decreased tax base. ^{[13] [14][15]}

Philanthropy

In 2006, Kiska co-founded a non-profit charitable organization called Dobrý anjel (translated as Good Angel), in which donors help families that have found themselves in a difficult financial situation as a result of a family member contracting a serious disease (such as cancer).^[7][16] By 2016, more than 170,000 people have donated to this organization in Slovakia.^[17] In 2014 Good Angel expanded their activities also to Czech Republic, where 60.000 are paying their monthly contributions in 2016.^[18] In addition to that, Kiska donates his monthly presidential salary to people in need.