The parliamentary Committee on Home Affairs and National Security on Friday adopted conclusions with a majority vote that during a recent scandal involving the provision of printouts of some phone records there was no abuse of office and that there was no violation of any laws. The committee also concluded that the publication of classified data in the Vecernji List daily prevented further police investigation into a dangerous criminal gang, and that a committee member publicly stated that he had had seen a report on the matter compiled by the Office of the National Security Council before the report was provided to this parliamentary committee.
The committee's vice chairman, Igor Dragovan, who prepared the conclusions, said after the committee's closed-door session that "there have been no unlawful acts regarding the printouts of telephone records. It should be noted that the same has been established by the Office of the National Security Council."
As for claims that opposition leader Tomislav Karamarko, president of the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), had seen the Office's classified report before the document was forwarded to other committee members, the parliamentary committee established that only four staffers in the Office of the National Security Council had seen the report and that "before the report arrived at the committee, a committee member publicly stated that he had seen the classified report". The committee, however, stopped short of naming that member in its conclusions.
The committee also believes that the the publication of classified data in the media caused damage to the investigation which had been conducted by the Police Directorate, which is why the committee urges for more efficient regulations about the scope of activities of the Operative and Technical Centre (OTC) so as to prevent abuse of office.
The committee also concluded that during the police activities there had been no abuse of office, but that the provisions of an interim protocol on cooperation between the Police Directorate and the OTC centre were breached. However, those provisions have no legislative strength and effects.
"The publication of classified data in Vecernji List (daily) with false allegations about law violations has prevented further police investigation into a criminal group and made it impossible to establish possible connections between it (the criminal group) and certain agents in the Security and Intelligence Agency (SOA)," according to one of the six conclusions made by the committee today.
Deputies of the opposition parties -- the HDZ and the HDSSB - voted against the conclusions.
Committee chairman Miroslav Tudjman of the HDZ said in his dissenting opinion that the scandal damaged the reputation of the Republic of Croatia and also harmed the national security system and the reputation of some high officials in security and intelligence services.
Tudjman warned about the vague wording of the legislation which he labelled as the cause of all the problems mentioned above.
