Economy Minister Tomislav Coric said on Thursday that Mayor Tomislav Tomasevic and his team were responsible for the markedly higher corporate gas bills in Zagreb, and not HDZ personnel, because they failed to procure it at better prices.

Tomasevic said earlier the former director of the City Gasworks’ Supply division, Igor Pirija, who ran the division until last October, was responsible and that he was HDZ personnel, claiming that he did not buy gas at cheaper prices on time and that Zagreb businesses were in trouble because of him.

Coric said Tomasevic should do his job and that Pirija was not in the HDZ.

Alluding to Tomasevic’s past as an activist, he said, “That phase is over, now it’s necessary to run Croatia’s largest city.”

“At one time, Holding and the Gasworks were taken over by the new city administration. (Nikola) Vukovic became the head of Holding for a few months. He could have procured the gas whenever he wanted. That procurement would have cost three and a half to four times less than it costs today,” Coric said, referring to the Zagreb Holding multi-utility conglomerate.

He added that Vukovic and his successors were appointed by Tomasevic.

The minister said the mayor and his team should assume responsibility for the higher price, find the money, buy enough gas, whatever the cost, and honour the contracts with corporate clients.

He said Tomasevic, Zagreb Holding and the team running the City Gasworks assumed responsibility for the Gasworks when they assumed responsibility for the city last May, regardless of who was director until one, two or five months ago.

“A new president of Holding’s management board was appointed in June. Talks probably began then with the companies owned by Holding. Someone should have said then that the City Gasworks was short of 600 gigawatt hours of gas to meet corporate needs until the end of April,” Coric said.

He reiterated that the price of gas at that time was several times lower than today and that the mayor and his team should have acted.

City Assembly vice president Mislav Herman (HDZ) told Tomasevic to stop using the City Gasworks’s previous management board as an excuse because he had enough time to buy gas at far lower prices.

He said that since Tomasevic came to power, there was enough time to contract a new gas price, claiming that on 15 August last year the price of gas was about five times lower than today.

“Instead of making illegal appointments in Zagreb Holding during the summer, he could have been buying gas at then far lower prices so that our corporate clients’ bills for December and the period ahead were far lower,” Herman said.

He, too, said Pirija was not an HDZ member.