The head of Croatia’s parliamentary Conflict of Interest Commission, Natasa Novakovic, said on Saturday that Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic should have declared his relationship with Igor Pokaz at the time of his appointment as ambassador to the United Kingdom because Plenkovic was the best man at Pokaz’s wedding.
“A best man is a related person. There is no doubt at all that Plenkovic does not have to exclude himself from deciding on the appointment of every person he knows or every person that works in the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs,” Novakovic told Croatian Radio in an interview.
“However, this case is not about a work-related acquaintance but about a private relationship, which is different,” she said.
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On Friday, the Conflict of Interest Commission initiated proceedings against Prime Minister Plenkovic because when appointing career diplomat Igor Pokaz as ambassador to the United Kingdom, he had failed to inform the public and the relevant authorities that he was the best man at Pokaz’s wedding.
Plenkovic said that following the Commission’s logic, he should be excluded from all appointments in the diplomatic service because all those people were more or less his friends, acquaintances or colleagues.
Asked about the Commission’s decision to launch proceedings against Environment and Energy Minister Tomislav Coric for appointing, at his own discretion, Marko Raos, Plenkovic’s uncle, to the paid position of member of the Biokovo Nature Park management board, Novakovic said that this was Coric’s right, but that such a move was not good.
She said that it would have been better if Coric had followed the procedure, as had Tourism Minister Gari Cappelli when he employed the prime minister’s cousin Nera Milicic to work as the head of the Croatian Tourism Board office in Munich.
Noting Coric had not violated any law, Novakovic said the question remains whether or not he was aware that Raos was related to his superior, namely Plenkovic. She wondered how Coric got in touch with Raos in the first place.
“Where did he get that information? That’s crucial to us,” she said.
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