A Zagreb County Court indictment panel on Tuesday rejected the application by former minister Gabriela Zalac's defence counsel to exclude the text messages she had exchanged with former state secretary Josipa Rimac from evidence in a case involving the mismanagement of European funds for software procurement.

Sani Ljubicic from the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) in Zagreb said that the indictment panel accepted all of the EPPO’s arguments, while Zalac’s defence attorney Jadranka Slokovic announced that she would file an appeal with the High Criminal Court.

Messages from Rimac’s mobile phone

“After the decision of the High Criminal Court, the indictment panel continues with its actions,” Ljubicic said. The indictment panel can ultimately confirm, reject or return the indictment to the EPPO for revision.

The prosecutor said that the court decided that the evidence was legally obtained by an order of the County Court in Zagreb for a search of mobile phones.

“According to the applicable case law, which is undisputed, common and long-standing and confirmed in a series of decisions of the Supreme and High Criminal Courts, such evidence is used in criminal cases and there is no reason not to use it,” concluded Ljubicic.

The evidence includes, among other things, text messages from the cell phone of Rimac, who is indicted in a separate case and with whom Zalac exchanged text messages about the software in question and mentioned a person with the initials A.P.

The defence counsel insists that “the messages from the Rimac file could not end up in the Zalac file by legal means” and that the manner in which they were obtained constitutes a “violation of basic principles.”

EU, Croatian budgets allegedly defrauded of more than €1.3m

At the end of December 2022, along with Gabrijela Zalac, the former Minister of Regional Development and EU Funds, the EPPO also charged Tomislav Petric, the former Director of the Central Financing and Contracting Agency (SAFU), and entrepreneurs Marko Jukic and Mladen Smunac for defrauding the EU and Croatian budgets of €1.3 million.

Zalac is charged with abuse of position and authority and of influence peddling, Jukic and Simunac are accused of abuse of position and authority, and their companies Ampelos and Micro project are charged with incitement to that crime.

The EPPO believes that during 2017 and 2018, the then Minister Zalac initiated a public procurement procedure for an information system for strategic planning and development management in which she wanted to secure an advantageous position for her co-defendants and their companies.

She was accused, among other things, of unjustifiably increasing the estimated value of the procurement and deciding to conduct the procurement negotiation process without issuing a public tender. During that process, only companies connected to the minister’s friends were invited to submit their bids. The tender was cancelled by the State Commission for the Control of Public Procurement Procedures in October 2017.

Finally, after an open public procurement procedure, the Ministry of Regional Development and EU Funds concluded a contract for the procurement of the information system with Jukic and Simunac’s company. The EPPO emphasises that the decision of the former minister unrealistically set the procurement price at €1.73 million, although the real price of the system would be approximately €360,000.