A panel on corruption and the origin of assets, held on Monday on the occasion of International Anti-Corruption Day, heard that declarations of assets in Croatia were considered a joke, so it was necessary to consider a bill examining the origin of assets and seizing illegal gains.

The panel was organised by Human Shield president and MEP Ivan Sincic, who said declarations of assets in Croatia were a joke and that they did not show what office holders really owned, adding that in the European Parliament the criteria were even lower.

Party member Dominik Vuletic said an International Monetary Fund survey showed that in Russia, “perceived as an exceptionally corrupt country, corruption accounted for 57% of GDP in 2014” and that in Croatia that ratio was 72%.

Vuletic said the bill examining the origin of assets and seizing illegal gains, if enacted, would make it mandatory to look into the disproportion between assets gained and incomes of state officials, judges, and members of management and supervisory boards in companies in which the state or local governments were majority owners.

Osijek Law School professor Mato Palic said the current situation was the result of ownership transformation and privatisation in the 1990s.

The only tool the Tax Administration has, to seize 54% of illegal gains, leaving the rest to the defendant, “is nothing else than money laundering with the seal and permission by the Tax Administration,” he said, adding that a “law examining the origin of assets is a constitutional foundation.”

Berislav Jelinic, editor in chief of Nacional weekly, said the role of investigative journalists and the media was not to prosecute and sentence but shed light on potential corruption and those involved in it.

Emilija Kaloper Cesar, the whistleblower in the INA oil company, said all Croatian prime ministers “learned their trade” in INA and that INA was sold with the blessing of all state institutions.