Local media reported on Wednesday that Uskok anti-corruption investigators have indicted eight defendants, including four former ministers in the HDZ-led cabinet - Darko Horvat, Boris Milosevic, Tomislav Tolusic, and Josip Aladrovic, over two probes into the illegal granting of government subsidies.

“According to unofficial sources,” state agency Hina said without explaining what this means, the four other persons involved are Horvat’s former assistant, Ana Mandac, a former official at the Ministry of Regional Development, Velimir Zunac, the director of the state administration for government-assisted areas, Katica Miskovic, and former mayor of the eastern town of Zupanja, Damir Juzbasic.

Horvat is the only one in this case to have been held in pre-trial detention for 10 days already, having been arrested in February. Investigators allege that in 2018, during his term as the Economy Minister in the cabinet of current Prime Minister, Andrej Plenkovic, he conspired with his assistant Mandac, and, incited by other co-defendants, illegally allocated 2.6 million kuna (€345,000) in grants to businesses “he had a personal interest in.”

Mandac, Milosevic, Tolusic, Zunac and Miskovic are also suspects in that branch of the case.

Horvat’s case also resulted in a second investigation, against former Labor Minister, Josip Aladrovic, who is charged with cronyism in two recruitment procedures in 2018 and in 2019, when he was the head of the state pension service HZMO. Aladrovic became minister in July 2019 and was sacked in April 2022 over this probe.

When the investigation was expanded, the mayor of Zupanja, Damir Juzbasic, also a former member of HDZ and now a nominally independent official supported by the right-wing HDZ-offshoot Domovinski Pokret (“Homeland Movement”) also became a suspect along with Aladrovic.

After his arrest in February, Horvat stepped down from his cabinet post, while Aladrovic and Deputy Prime Minister, Boris Milosevic, remained in their posts for weeks. This was the first time ever that a government minister was arrested while in office, and the first time that two members of cabinet were simultaneously under investigation for corruption. They were eventually sacked in late April.

According to unofficial sources,

“Horvat was arrested after his former assistant Mandac, a suspect in another corruption case, dubbed the Wind Park Scam, testified to investigators that the subsidies in question were awarded against the legally mandated criteria,” Hina said, citing “unofficial sources.”

“She also allegedly said that expert advisors had warned that awarding grants contrary to the relevant criteria was against the law. Horvat claims that he merely signed off on papers that Mandac would bring him,” Hina said.