The Parliament's Conflict of Interest Commission decided on Friday to launch proceedings against Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic and the leader of the opposition Most party, Bozo Petrov, for not disclosing to the public their activities during the drafting of the law on state-appointed administration at the Agrokor food and and retail group.

Commission deputy chair, Davorin Ivanjek, said proceedings would be launched against Plenkovic because he had failed to reveal to the public members of an informal group of experts tasked with drafting Lex Agrokor. In addition, he had nominated Ante Ramljak to take up the post of Agrokor emergency administrator, but failed to take action to prevent Ramljak from going on to hire the same people he had worked with on drafting Lex Agrokor as his advisors on the company’s management board.

The persons the commission referred to were advisors working for private consulting firms, including Tomislav Matic of Texo Management, Branimir Bricelj and Marko Delic of Altera Savjetovanje, Tonci Korunic of InterCapital, attorney Boris Savoric, and Zoran Besak of the Ethical Financing Co-op (ZEF), Ivanjek said.

Plenkovic is accused of having violated the principles of public office because he was aware that these people and Ramljak had all taken part in the informal e-mail task force to draft the Lex Agrokor bill, and failed to inform the public that the law on Agrokor had been created by an informal group that had held meetings in government offices.

Commission unable to determine if Savoric was hired by Plenkovic

Ivanjek said that the Commission was unable to determine whether it was Plenkovic who had hired the attorney Savoric, or his law firm, to be a member of the task force, only that Savoric was invited and hired by Ramljak.

The Commission also could not positively conclude whether Plenkovic knew if persons who were part of the task force, and who were later hired as subcontractors for AlixPartners, a consultancy in Agrokor’s restructuring, had earned any income for their services.

The Conflict of Interest Commission also launched proceedings against Most party leader Bozo Petrov because at the time – when his party was part of the ruling coalition – he was one of the initiators of the informal task force, and took part in a large number of the group’s meetings, and proposed that Bricelj and Besak join the group, said Commission chair Natasa Novakovic.

At the time when Ramljak was appointed, Petrov was aware that Ramljak had been a member of the task force drafting Lex Agrokor and that persons appointed by him as his advisors had also been members of that task force – however, he did not inform the public about it, Novakovic said, adding that the public still does not know what was the exact role played by Most and Bozo Petrov in the process.

The Commission decided not to take action against Interior Minister and Plenkovic’s former chief-of-staff Davor Bozinovic in this case, because the documents did not show that the Office of the Prime Minister had in its records the task force’s meetings of February 19, 2017 and of March 3 and 16, 2017.

As for meetings held outside the government, Bozinovic did not have to know about them, and therefore could not have informed the Commission of them, commission member Tatjana Vucetic reported.

The Commission’s decisions came following a report by the opposition Zivi Zid party, which said that Plenkovic, Petrov, and Bozinovic had all misled the public about the number of meetings held in government offices with members of the so-called Borg e-mail group on the drafting of the law on emergency administration.

The Commission today also launched proceedings against Zagreb Mayor, Milan Bandic, because in a statement to the media of March 3, 2017, concerning the hiring of Svetimir Maric, the brother of the Minister for State Assets, Goran Maric, at the Zagrebacki Holding public utilities company, he had instructed company management to hire Svetimir Maric, even though he did not have the authority to do so.

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