Economy and Sustainable Development Minister Davor Filipovic said on Friday that the Croatian members of the Management Board of the Ina oil and gas company will be relieved of their duties at a meeting of the Supervisory Board on Wednesday unless they resigned by then. Pročitaj više

Speaking in an interview with Nova TV commercial broadcaster on Friday evening, Filipovic said that Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic had made it clear to the Croatian members of the Ina Management Board that they must go following a €133m gas resale scam at the company.

Our position is firm and clear – the entire Management Board must go. The Hungarian representatives got the message, and as far as the Croatian representatives are concerned, unless they resign, they will be dismissed at a meeting of the Ina Supervisory Board on Wednesday, the minister said.

“They have until Wednesday to make this move, and if they don’t, they will be relieved of their duties, as decided by the government, at a meeting of the Supervisory Board on Wednesday,” Filipovic said.

He said that it was important to use this situation to change the corporate management system at Ina. “That’s what I have also discussed with Hungarian representatives. We agreed that the present corporate management model is bad and must be changed so that corporate scandals of this kind wouldn’t happen again in the future.”

Filipovic said that it was up to the Supervisory Board to decide whether the Management Board members in question would get severance pay or not. “I think that any severance pay right now would be inappropriate.”

The Croatian members of the Management Board are Niko Dalic, Darko Markotic and Barbara Doric. Ferenc Horváth and József Simola, the Hungarian members nominated by MOL, resigned earlier today, while the Hungarian President of the Management Board, Sándor Fasimon, resigned last week.

Filipovic reiterated that he did not expect problems with gas supply. He said that MOL’s representatives “accept the government’s decision that all gas produced in Croatia should go to Croatian households, Croatian companies and Croatian institutions.”