Former organised crime police inspector Zeljko Dolacki was found guilty and sentenced to six years in prison and 3.3 million kuna (€445,000) in damages on Tuesday for breaking into a police safe in his own office in Zagreb between 2015 and 2016 and stealing cash and valuables related to ongoing investigations.

Dolacki had been indicted by organised crime police unit Uskok for stealing items that had been seized in ongoing investigations and placed as evidence into police custody, some time in the period from February 2015 to April 2016. According to the indictment, Dolacki stole some €290,000 and 640,000 kuna (€86,200) in cash, and over two kilogrammes of gold jewellery.

“Dolacki had betrayed the confidence citizens had in him as the head of the police department for fighting organised crime, especially since the crime was not some spur of the moment thing, and since it was committed at the very headquarters of Zagreb police. In doing so, he caused damage and brought disgrace to his colleagues in law enforcement,” Uskok prosecutor, Slobodan Sasic.

In 2016, in order to hide evidence of the theft, Dolacki staged a fake burglary, using a saw to cut through the hinges on the door of the safe in his office. Forensic experts later testified that the traces left by the saw indicate that the hinges were cut with the safe door already open, and trace evidence of the saw was also found in a bag belonging to Dolacki.

Although Dolacki had at first claimed that he didn’t own a chainsaw, he later changed his story after surveillance camera footage surfaced showing him buying a chainsaw at a local Bauhaus hardware store before the alleged robbery. He then said that the saw he was seen buying was different from the one used on the safe.

The trial, increasingly bizarre even by Croatian standards, then focused on the defence and prosecution discussing whether any saw’s provenance can be successfully traced, with both sides producing more saws to make their case.

At the time when the theft from a safe in police headquarters was revealed, the ensuing scandal led four senior police officials to hand in their resignations, including national police chief, Vlado Dominic, and Zagreb police chief, Goran Burusic.

Originally arrested in April 2016, Dolacki was released from pre-trial custody in June 2016 after Uskok had collected depositions from around 30 people questioned over the course of the investigation.

During the trial, Dolacki maintained his innocence, claiming that he was being framed in a politically motivated conspiracy, and named former interior minister, Vlaho Orepic, as the ringleader of the group which sought to bury several investigations led by Dolacki.

Dolacki was not present in the court room on Tuesday, as Croatian law does not require defendants to be present at their own sentencing. The court then issued an arrest warrant but Dolacki was nowhere to be found on Tuesday, with his lawyer Veljko Miljevic telling reporters that although he had no knowledge of Dolacki’s whereabouts, he didn’t think “that Dolacki is on the run.”

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