Following the expansion of a probe into the Fimi Media corruption case to the ruling HDZ party as a legal entity, the GONG NGO said on Friday the accountability of the entire party leadership from that time should be established, and called for eliminating all possible wrongdoings in the financing of political parties ahead of the upcoming parliamentary election.
GONG called in a statement for assuming political and legal responsibility in keeping with democratic standards, and warned that the HDZ's responsibility did not stop only at the responsibility of the legal entity and its employees, but that the responsibility of the entire leadership from that time must also be established.
GONG once again pointed to the importance of a free, fair and transparent election in every sense.
The NGO said it had been pointing for years to the non-transparent funding of the HDZ, offering concrete figures and information as leads for launching an investigation. It underlined that those were not occasional financial irregularities but systematic wrongdoing.
GONG pointed to data on the 2005 presidential election campaign of HDZ candidate Jadranka Kosor, now the party's president and prime minister, saying it clearly showed that more money was spent than was officially reported by the party.
GONG also pointed to the millions received in 2006 and 2007 from unidentified sources, and to the 2007 parliamentary election, when GONG and Transparency International Croatia established that the HDZ spent on media advertising twice the amount officially reported.
The NGO warned that relevant institutions, such as the State Prosecutor's Office and the State Audit Office, did not launch an investigation on time, despite sufficient leads that the HDZ had used money systematically and illegally syphoned from public companies and from other unidentified sources which, GONG said, raised questions about their credibility and selective approach.
