The Office for the Suppression of Corruption and Organised Crime (USKOK) on Wednesday filed an indictment against three executives in the HEP power supply company and two in the Monting PiM company for taking and receiving bribes.
The indictment was filed against former HEP management board chairman Ivan Mravak and executives Petar Cubelic and Zeljko Kljakovic Gaspic, and against Monting PiM supervisory board chairman Ljubo Busic and management board chairman Ante Matic.
According to USKOK, in September 2007, when Mravak was chairman of HEP's management board and deputy chairman of the supervisory board of the HEP Proizvodnja daughter company, he agreed to a request by the ruling HDZ party's treasurer that the signing of contracts with the companies within HEP be made conditional on the payment of a commission in the amount of three per cent of a contract's value, in the belief that the commission money was necessary to finance the party.
USKOK contends that Mravak relayed the request to HEP Proizvodnja director Cubelic and supervisory board chairman Kljakovic Gaspic and that they accepted it.
According to USKOK, Mravak and Cubelic on three occasions asked contractors to pay the commission and in one case this was complied with in part. In November 2008, Cubelic asked Busic to pay HRK 900,000 as a condition for the signing of a contract and an annex, telling him the money was for the HDZ. Busic agreed and gave Cubelic HRK 600,000 between May and July 2009. Cubelic allegedly handed over the money to Mravak, who forwarded it to the HDZ treasurer. The contractors committed to paying the rest of the commission at a later date.
In today's statement, USKOK does not identify the HDZ treasurer on whose orders Mravak asked for the bribes, but it is known from before that he is Mladen Barisic, a former Customs chief who told USKOK investigators during a probe in the Fimi Media corruption case how money had been syphoned from state-owned companies and ministries. Part of the money allegedly went into an HDZ slush fund, for which the party is under investigation.
The accused were arrested and placed in custody last year on suspicion of wrongdoing in the signing of a HRK 200 million contract for works on the thermoelectric power plant in Sisak, which was to have been amended with a HRK 40 million annex. For that deal, Mravak was allegedly to have received a bribe of two million euros but did not because an investigation into HEP was launched and he ended up in prison. Police and USKOK were also investigating a HRK 32.5 million annex to a contract for works on the Zagreb thermoelectric power plant.
