The Croatian Central Bank (HNB) said on Thursday it would take action, in line with the law and general acts, to check if the buying and selling of banks' securities by its employees was legal.

The HNB will actively cooperate with the HANFA regulator and other state institutions authorised to probe the work and actions of HNB executives and employees so that their possibly illegal or unethical actions can be punished, a press release said.

The central bank acknowledges the justified public interest in the buying and selling of banks’ shares, bonds and other securities, especially if it was done by the leaders and employees of the institution overseeing those banks, it added.

The HNB said it was its duty to inform the public that governor Boris Vujcic, his deputy Sandra Svaljek and other employees had acted in line with the regulations and ethical standards which were in force at the relevant time, adding that according to the information known so far, there were no indications that they had used insider information.

The HNB said that at the time he bought shares in Rijecka Banka and Zagrebacka Banka, Vujcic was neither governor nor deputy governor nor a member of the HNB Council, and that no regulation in force at that time banned or restricted him from buying shares in a Croatian bank.

He sold those shares in 2001, although no regulation or ethical principle obliged him to do so, the HNB added.

Svaljek bought Erste & Steiermaerkische Bank’s corporate bonds at the end of 2012, when she was an external member of the HNB Council, based on public information contained in a prospectus approved by HANFA, the HNB said.

She held those bonds until they were due in 2017, when she was neither a member of the HNB Council nor an HNB employee, it added.

When Vujcic and Svaljek bought those shares and bonds, Croatia was not in the EU, so their actions could not have breached any international regulations, the HNB said.

Croatia joined the EU in mid-2013 and since then it has been aligning its legal system with EU law, which process includes regulations on operations of the European Central Bank, of which the HNB will become a member once Croatia joins the euro area, the HNB said.

The HNB has been enhancing with its own regulations the ethical principles of work and doing business which will be fully aligned with ECB law when Croatia introduces the euro, the press release added.