The USKOK anti-corruption office has abandoned its investigation into businessman Petar Pripuz and 11 other suspects who were suspected of money siphoning and tax evasion in scrap metal trading.

Pripuz’s attorney Anto Nobilo confirmed to the Croatian state news agency Hina that the defence team had received a decision from USKOK saying that the information collected during the investigation did not provide grounds for an indictment.

The court had returned the indictment to the prosecution for completion on two occasions, with USKOK alleging that from 2012 to April 2017 Pripuz, the de facto manager of the CE-ZA-R company, conspired with the other suspects to pay to their companies for the scrap metal he had already brought from suppliers.

USKOK suspected that that way, around €5.3 million was siphoned from CE-ZA-R and the state budget was defrauded of €700,000 in unpaid VAT.

The last time the Zagreb County Court returned the indictment to the prosecution for completion was on 1 March, after which the court determined that the evidence in the case file did not contain significant elements of a criminal act. The indictment was returned to USKOK for completion the first time in December 2020.

The suspects had from the start denied the charges, and Nobilo previously told Hina that the prosecution failed to provide any evidence for the most important allegation in the indictment – that CE-ZA-R bought scrap metal in Dalmatia and that the companies in the indictment were used only to siphon cash from CE-ZA-R.