Conty court in the eastern city of Osijek decided on Tuesday to extend pre-trial custody for the two suspects in the forged text messages scandal, who were indicted for obstruction of justice earlier this week.

According to the indictment filed by prosecutors, in the period from mid-2017 to September 2018 Varga had 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.

A former police IT technician, Varga was arrested in September in his home town of Belisce for his involvement in the forgeries scandal.

Eight days later, his co-defendant Blaz Curic was arrested 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.

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