Police arrests made on Monday morning in Zagreb and Zadar are connected with former HDZ state secretary Josipa Rimac, now Pleslic, Hina learned from sources close to the investigation. According to unofficial reports, among those arrested is former Zadar University Rector Dijana Vican.

Apart from Vican, who was arrested in Zadar, the police have reportedly also arrested the director of the Graditelj Svratista construction company, Ante Stanisic.

The Jutarnji List daily reports that Rimac intervened with the former university rector with regard to a job for Zadar University in which Stanišić’s company was interested.

The daily also says that Rimac, while serving as State Secretary at the Ministry of Public Administration, lived in an apartment in a building in Zagreb’s Mlinovi neighbourhood owned by that company.

Asked about the arrests, Justice Minister Ivan Malenica, whom reporters approached as he was attending an event marking the day of the Zagreb Faculty of Law, said only that the operation was being conducted by independent authorities.

The anti-corruption agency USKOK on Monday confirmed the arrests and evidence-gathering operations, including property searches in Zadar and Zagreb.

Rimac, who before serving as a state secretary, was the mayor of Knin and a member of parliament, is indicted for favouring the investor building a wind park in the area of Ervenik and Knin.

In proceedings that branched off from the Wind Park case, she is suspected of wrongdoing in a number of cases, including the rigging of state exams, using her influence in the allocation of grants for areas populated by ethnic minorities, and favouritism in the form of changed requirements for the lease of state-owned land for cattle breeding in karst areas.