Richard Sulík

Richard Sulík (born 12 January 1968) is a Slovak economist, businessman and politician. He is the leader of the political party Freedom and Solidarity.

Life

Born 1968 in the then Czechoslovakia, Sulík emigrated in 1980 with his parents to then West Germany, where they lived in the city of Pforzheim. In 1987 he went to Munich to study physics and later economics at the Ludwig Maximilian University. When the borders were reopened right after the end of the cold war, Sulík returned in 1991 to Czechoslovakia. While still a student at the University of Economics in Bratislava, he founded and ran the company FaxCOPY.

When he graduated in 2003, Sulík was working as a special advisor of the Slovak Minister of Finance Ivan Miklos, whom he convinced to take his master thesis as a blueprint for the 2004 Slovak tax reform. This tax reform, introducing a 19% flat tax on all types of income and a 19% value added tax, was believed to be the single most important reform leading to the large increase of foreign investment in Slovakia and the economic boom period. After the reform was put through, he remained in the Advisory Board of the Ministry.