Social Democrat lawmaker Ranko Ostojic, who also chairs the parliamentary committee on internal affairs and national security, said on Wednesday that the developments around a scandal dubbed the Text-Message Affair requires the National Security Council to be convened.
“Unfortunately, there is cause for concern, because if this is done among people who are formally in charge of national security, who work together, who cooperate with people prepared to construe false text messages and… reach the point where even the Prime Minister is in jeopardy, then this is something very dangerous,” Ostojic, member of the largest opposition Social Democratic Party (SDP) told reporters in the parliament.
“I don’t want to point fingers, but this really is dangerous, for the country and the people,” he said, adding he did not understand why President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic had not yet convened a session the National Security Council, since the situation calls for such a move.
National Security Council, the central coordinating body of the Croatian security and intelligence system, is composed of the President, joined by interior, foreign, and justice ministers, along with the president’s national security advisor, military chief of staff, and the heads of the Security and Intelligence Agency, the Military Security and Intelligence Agency, and the Office of the National Security Council.
The Text-Message Affair began after a computer expert, previously employed by the police, Franjo Varga, was arrested in September on suspicion of producing forged text messages for the convicted football mogul Zdravko Mamic.
Later in September, the personal driver of the Agriculture Minister and a prominent member of the ruling Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) Tomislav Tolusic was arrested as well, on suspicion of having notified Varga of the ongoing investigation against him.
Other prominent persons mentioned in the media as Varga’s potential clients were another senior official of the HDZ, Milijan Brkic, as well as the party’s former leader, Tomislav Karamarko, with allegations saying that the texts ordered from Varga were used by Brkic and Karamarko for internal party conflicts during the time Karamarko led the party, to discredit members of opposing party factions.
Brkic, who was at the time serving as deputy chief of police, has been named in articles published by Nacional weekly, citing a file documenting an internal affairs probe in which it was discovered that confidential information was leaked in a case investigating elite prostitution in 2011.
Brkic had denied any wrongdoing, and has insisted that the scandal is targeting him as part of internal fighting in the HDZ.
Ostojic said his committee had not received any written reports from the state prosecutor’s office or the security services about the potential abuses of the intelligence system.
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