Public Administration Minister Lovro Kuscevic said on Saturday that the issue of his resignation, which the opposition and partners in the ruling coalition demanded lately over his alleged involvement in property-related scandals, was a matter between him and the prime minister.
“The fate of any minister is in the hands of the prime minister,” Kuscevic, who is under fire in the media after it emerged that he was allegedly involved in a string of property-related scandals during his term as mayor of Nerezisca on the southern island of Brac, told Nova TV in an interview.
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The minister added that he would not hesitate for a single moment if Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic asked him to leave.
He would not give a straightforward answer when asked if Plenkovic had told him that he had caused harm to the government and the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) party, as reported by the media.
“I have explained all of my actions to both the prime minister and the (HDZ) leadership, I have provided evidence, arguments and final court rulings,” Kuscevic said, adding that his conscience was clear.
The minister claimed that the fake scandals he is being accused of have primarily caused harm to him and his family.
“(…) the HDZ is a strong party. This government is doing a good job and its results are so good that fake scandals cannot harm the party,” said Kuscevic.
Asked about allegations of fraudulent behaviour on the part of his advisor Zeljko Holik in connection with land on Brac that ended up being owned by mysterious offshore companies, Kuscevic said that he was unpleasantly surprised by media reports saying that Holik still maintained business relations with those companies.
“I will talk to him on Monday to hear his side of the story and then we will make a decision,” said the minister.
The media have reported that Holik, Kuscevic’s main advisor at the Public Administration Ministry, has found himself in the centre of a scandal involving land in Nerezisca and that the companies he used to run significantly profited from changes to the physical plan of Nerezisca, which were adopted in 2015 and which Kuscevic had allegedly pushed for as head of Nerezisca municipality.
The media have also reported that hundreds of thousands of square metres of land on the island of Brac have thus ended up owned by mysterious offshore companies under the pretext of a medical tourism project that was never implemented.
