Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said on Monday that he expects the State Prosecutor's Office (DORH) to provide "certain explanations" related to the Janaf scandal and that recently appointed Member of Parliament Mate Cicak (HDZ) needs to explain to the public everything concerning the rezoning of land he owns.
“I see this process just as I have the entire time and the way I saw it during the first term – an uncompromising fight against corruption, independent, continual and lawful conduct by all institutions such as DORH, USKOK (anti-corruption office) and the police, and I expect light to be shed on all of this,” Plenkovic told reporters in Nasice after a meeting of the Council for Slavonia, Baranja and Srijem.
Considering the questions that have arisen in public, I also expect DORH to provide certain explanations. I think that would make it easier for everyone to understand the entire process, said Plenkovic.
Reporters asked him how he looked now on the fact that the “club” run by former Janaf CEO Dragan Kovacevic was frequented by his ministers and President Zoran Milanovic in light of information that Kovacevic allegedly kept HRK 12 million there, making it seem as a “hotbed of corruption”.
Plenkovic reiterated the government’s stance in the fight against corruption, that no one is untouchable, because it appears, he said, that not everyone understood what that means.
“This is something I say at party meetings, to party bodies. No one is untouchable! Party membership, name and surname, office – DORH is not interested in that, neither are the police nor USKOK nor I,” he said.
Anyone suspected of corruption has to answer for that. That means fighting corruption and that is how we are acting. This entire saga over the past few weeks shows that not everyone has understood that. They will in time, he said.
“We have a very stable majority,” Plenkovic said when asked how will he defend his ministers if a no-confidence motion is launched.
Hypotheses of impeaching the president
Considering that some ideas about the need to impeach the president have emerged in public, Plenkovic said they were just “hypotheses”.
“They are just some hypotheses that currently exist,” he said, adding that the initiative for a parliamentary inquiry commission into the Janaf affair was also a hypothesis as there is still no written explanation of the request for it to be established.
He believes that HDZ MP Mate Cicak, who replaced Drazen Barisic in parliament, arrested as part of the Janaf scandal, has to explain the suspicious rezoning of land he owns to the public as well as the business deals by Rugvica Municipality, of which he is the mayor, with Elektrocentar Petek, a company owned by Kreso Petek who has been arrested in the Janaf scandal.
“He has to explain all that to the public, to the very last detail,” said Plenkovic, adding that he would personally question him about that too.