Former leader of the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) and deputy prime minister Tomislav Karamarko said on Saturday that the accusations against his wife Ana Karamarko made by the prosecutorial authorities who are probing nine companies and 38 persons on suspicion of tax fraud are "the theatre of the absurd".

In his lengthy Facebook post on the investigation against his wife and 37 others suspected of tax evasion and other murky dealings, Karamarko said that “this theatre of the absurd” was another attempt to find anything that could incriminate him.

Karamarko criticised media coverage of the case and wondered how come reporters of the Jutarnji List daily arrived in front of his flat at the same when the police officers who then arrested his wife did.

He also criticised media outlets for insisting on and highlighting that one of those 38 suspects in this operation was the wife of Tomislav Karamarko.

He said that all those developments resembled the political showdown in 2016 when he resigned as the leader of the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) after the Bridge party used “infantile moves” to topple down the government and accuse him of the conflict of interest and of advocating the interests of the Hungarian side in the INA-MOL case.

He went on say that he was exposed to all those attacks due to “his ideological structure and policies” which he was trying to pursue and implement.

In this context, he said that he had tried to strengthen domestic production, limit the power of lobbies of importers, strengthen SMEs, create an implementable population policy, conduct lustration and prosecute communist crimes.

His wife Ana Karamarko was arrested last Wednesday as one of the suspects in an investigation into financial crimes. After she was questioned by the authorities she was released in the evening that day because anti-corruption investigators did not ask that she be remanded in custody.

The investigation covers nine companies and 38 persons, one of whom has been in prison from before while six are currently beyond the reach of Croatian police.

Tomislav Pavkovic and Oliver Kolobaric are believed to have led the group suspected of conspiring for the purpose of evading taxes and customs duties, abuse of trust in business operations, and aiding and abetting the commission of those crimes.

The group, suspected of using fictitious contracts to siphon HRK 20 million from a number of companies, defrauding the state of HRK 11 million in the process, was allegedly put together by the two men.

The persons in question and their companies are suspected of charging non-existent services via fictitious invoices and tax fraud from 2017 until 2019.