Croatia's anti-corruption agency Uskok indicted Franjo Varga, a former police IT specialist, and Blaz Curic, a former driver for Agriculture Minister Tomislav Tolusic, on Monday, on counts of obstruction of justice, and aiding and abetting thereof, asking the court to keep both defendants in pre-trial custody.

According to the indictment, filed with the county court in the eastern city of Osijek, in the period from mid-2017 to September 2018 Varga produced printouts of forged text message correspondence between senior government officials and several prominent people who were under investigation or on trial in highly publicised cases in Croatia.

These notably include former longtime executive of the Dinamo football club, Zdravko Mamic, who was at the time on trial for syphoning transfer funds from the club and tax evasion. Another is the former owner of the Agrokor food and retail giant, Ivica Todoric, who at the time fought Croatia’s extradition request from his self-imposed exile in the United Kingdom, where was wanted for the investigation of the alleged syphoning of funds from the nearly bankrupted firm.

They had both dismissed charges levied against them, and used the forged printouts as proof that their right to a free and unbiased trial had been violated.

Cases of Mamic and Todoric

Mamic, known for flamboyant news conferences, had theatrically presented the forged printouts of text messages in a news conference in June last year, claiming that they prove that prosecutors had been pressuring a court judge into handing Mamic a conviction without solid evidence. His lawyer even filed a motion asking the court to postpone sentencing until the messages are investigated.

But only days later, the court dismissed the motion, found Mamic guilty, and sentenced him to six and a half years in prison. He was not present during the court sentencing and later re-appeared in neighbouring Bosnia and Herzegovina, giving news conferences in the Catholic pilgrimage town of Medjugorje. Bosnia said it would not move to extradite Mamic to Croatia on account of him holding Bosnian citizenship.

In another case of forged text message printouts, the deposed Agrokor CEO, Ivica Todoric, claimed he had received 15 pages of text messages exchanged between former Economy Minister Martina Dalic and Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic, purportedly indicating that the two of them had conspired to steal the company from under him.

In April 2018, Todoric had sent the printouts to the head of the Croatian Helsinki Committee and anti-corruption police Uskok from his self-imposed exile in London, requesting state authoroties to investigate the matter. At the time, Todoric was fighting extradition to Croatia, after investigators started looking into Agrokor, then the largest single private-owned company in the country.

Uskok later dismissed the printouts as forgeries, and Todoric was extradited to Croatia in November and immediately put in investigative custody, only to be released on a €1 million bail later that month.

The plot unravels

A former police IT technician, Varga was arrested in September in his home town of Belisce for his involvement in the forgeries scandal. Curic was arrested eight days later in Zagreb, under suspicion that he had warned Varga of his pending arrest, allowing Varga to delete his phone contacts and incriminating evidence before the police searched his home.

At the time, Curic worked as a professional driver assigned to Agriculture Minister Tomislav Tolusic. Days after, he was revealed to be a close friend of Milijan Brkic, a former national police deputy chief, who is currently one of five Deputy Speakers of Parliament, and a prominent member of the ruling Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) party.

Brkic confirmed to reporters that Curic is his friend, but denied having any knowledge of the forget text messages.

In the indictment filed on Monday, which qualified Varga’s forgeries as obstruction of justice, Curic is charged with abetting the act, by allegedly acting as a middleman, providing Varga with phone numbers of state officials.

Deposition leaked

After the scandal broke last year, media reports based on leaked depositions that Varga had made during his time in custody said that Varga told investigators his services had also been used by the former leader of HDZ, Tomislav Karamarko.

Known as a prominent nationalist hard-liner, Karamarko had served as head of intelligence agency SOA from 2006 to 2008, and as Interior Minister from 2008 to 2011, before taking control of the party in 2012 after the ouster of former Prime Minister Jadranka Kosor.

Four years later, he became Deputy Prime Minister, and served in that role from January to June 2016, when his short-lived coalition government collapsed and he was ousted from HDZ leadership.

According to the testimony leaked to the press, Varga had also implicated Karamarko’s close aid Brkic, who still holds senior party positions. Media speculations alleged that Karamarko and Brkic might have used Varga’s forgeries for intra-party conflicts at HDZ, in order to discredit members of opposing party factions, without specifying any names.

Both Karamarko and Brkic deny any involvement in the affair.

The Osijek county court will decide on the prosecutor’s indictment on Tuesday, given that Varga and Curic’s pre-trial custody, which began in December, is set to expire on February 19.

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