The GONG election monitoring NGO on Friday called for Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic to resign over what they described as "false deposition statements made by several office-holders including the prime minister himself" given to Croatian institutions over the topic of "potentially the largest corruption scandal of Agrokor."

GONG issued its press release two days after N1 television published exclusive transcripts of the deposition that former Economy Minister Martina Dalic gave to Uskok, Croatia’s anti-corruption police, in which she talked about the government’s handling of the crisis at Agrokor.

“If the deposition made by former Deputy Prime Minister and Economy Minister Martina Dalic before Uskok is true, senior officials, who have conspired with a private interest group, have occupied and abused democratic processes and institutions, and deluded the public, and also censored the media, which is why this government can no longer manage the country,” GONG said.

The NGO accused Prime Minister Plenkovic of deluding the public when he denied having held “an initial meeting” with Agrokor’s former CEO and owner Ivica Todoric.

They also accused Finance Minister Zdravko Maric of having lied to the Conflict of Interest Commission about his role in the efforts to bail out the debt-ridden food and retail group Agrokor.

Furthermore, GONG insisted that officials involved in the process made use of Croatia’s Security and Intelligence Agency (SOA) for the unlawful vetting of candidates to be appointed as Agrokor’s emergency administrator.

On Thursday, SOA chief Danijel Markic said that SOA had been involved in shedding light on the Agrokor case but that there had been no requests for security vetting, so only “publicly available sources” were used, not SOA’s “resources.”

After the depositions were made to USKOK investigators in February 2018, the state prosecutor’s office DORH in June dismissed formal charges filed against Dalic by the opposition parties Zivi Zid and Slobodna Hrvatska, on the suspicion of conflict of interest.

However, GONG insists that there are many indications that private interests unbeknown to the public came before public interest.

On Thursday, PM Penkovic said that the publication of the transcripts constituted an orchestrated attack against his cabinet.

“All this has been orchestrated on the government’s first day (after the summer recess), during the Uljanik crisis, following the crisis with (Health) Minister Kujundzic,” Plenkovic said.

Asked about it again, Plenkovic reiterated this was a “finished story” on which the state prosecutor and the parliamentary Conflict of Interest Commission had already made their conclusions about.

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