After a nine-hour questioning, investigating judge Ivan Perkovic set a 48-hour detention against three men in the so-called Daimler case, suspected of abuse of office and money laundering, to prevent them from tempering with witnesses, spokeswoman for the Karlovac County Court Alenka Laptalo told reporters late on Tuesday evening.
Detention was set against Ivan Zapcic, Marko Vukovic and Tomica Godec at the proposal of the County State Prosecutor’s Office.
In that period the County Prosecutor’s Office will have to decide if it is going to file for an investigation against Zapcic, Vukovic and Godec.
According to their defence lawyers, the three suspects said they were not guilty.
Zapcic and Vukovic, former co-owners of the IM Metal company from Ozalj, are suspected of receiving into private accounts EUR 250,000 from "a company based in Germany" with which they purchased real estate and business premises in the Karlovac area, later renting it to a company which they owned at the time and of never repaying the loan. Godec is suspected of abuse of office for charging EUR 1.6 million for providing consulting services via his US-based company, services which were actually never provided.
The Daimler case came to light after it was uncovered in the US that the company had paid more more than $100 million in bribes to state officials in various countries, including, allegedly, Croatia. Croatia signed the fire trucks deal with Daimler when Sime Lucin was minister of the interior. According to US prosecutors, the bribes for the purchase of the fire trucks were paid until 2008.
