A court in the eastern city of Osijek has sentenced former Pozega mayor Darko Puljasic and deputy mayor Mario Pilon to 14 months in prison on the charge of rigging tenders for the energy renovation of buildings in Pozega, with the right to parole after six months.

The Osijek County Court announced the verdict on Friday, saying that both men were guilty of influence peddling.

Both Puljasic and Pilon were sentenced to a prison sentence of one year and two months, with a partial conditional sentence under which the unconditional part of the sentence of six months will be served while the remaining eight months will not be served if during the two-year probation period they do not commit another crime.

The anti-corruption office USKOK alleged that Puljasic and Pilon used their powers as mayor and deputy mayor to ask the director of the Pozega utility company Komunalac, Josip Vitez, in 2020 to favour certain contractors in public procurement for the production of energy certificates and major projects for the energy renovation of buildings managed by Komunalac.

At the same time, they asked Vitez to send invitations for the submission of bids for energy renovation for each individual residential building to those bidders to whom they direct him, and that these bidders, in accordance with the agreement, will secure two more bids from other bidders.

They asked the bidders to coordinate their bids with each other in such a way that the most favourable one would be precisely those contractors that they previously selected, in order to achieve the highest allowable prices for co-financing by the Fund for Environmental Protection and Energy Efficiency.

Puljasic resigned from the position of Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) MP, and on the same day the prosecutors filed an indictment against him for subsidy fraud in the amount of 1 million kuna (€132,720), which was paid out by the Ministry of Regional Development and EU funds based on falsified documents for the extension of an elementary school.

Puljasic was dismissed from the position of president of the HDZ city committee and resigned to the position of vice president of the HDZ county organisation, and Mario Pilon to the position of member in that party body.

At the end of March last year, an indictment panel of the Osijek County Court confirmed the indictment against Puljasic and Pilon, whom USKOK accused of rigging tenders for the energy renovation of buildings in Pozega through influence peddling.

The High Criminal Court decided that the first-instance court had fully and correctly established all the facts on which the decision depended and rightly concluded that the evidence which the defendants asked to be excluded was legal.