The Parliament's Credentials and Privileges Commission (MIP) on Thursday stripped of immunity from prosecution HDSSB MP Ivan Drmic and approved the continuation of criminal proceedings against him.
Drmic is one of four people indicted for attempting to bribe Supreme Court judges so that they would overturn a ruling against Branimir Glavas, a politician convicted of war crimes committed in Osijek in 1991.
The Commission's decision, which is yet to be confirmed by the parliament at its first plenary session, was unanimous, and Drmic himself voted in favour of stripping him of immunity, telling reporters afterwards that this was the third time he was being stripped of immunity and that the case would continue in court.
The MIP stripped the HDSSB MP of immunity on two occasions in 2011 at the request of the anti-corruption agency USKOK which charges him with conspiracy to commit crime, illegal mediation, and filing a false police report.
However, since in the December 4 election he was re-elected a member of Parliament, USKOK again requested that he be stripped of immunity from criminal prosecution.
The indictment in the case also covers Osijek entrepreneur Drago Tadic, his wife Bozica Tadic Cavar, Split entrepreneur Srecko Jurisic, and a former deputy editor-in-chief of the Glas Slavonije daily and friend of Glavas's, Sanja Marketic. Jurisic later made a plea deal with USKOK, pleading guilty to the charges.
According to USKOK, Tadic linked the other indictees in June and July 2010, when the Supreme Court was deciding on an appeal against the Glavas ruling, in an attempt to find persons who could be bribed to influence the court's judges or bribe the judges to grant the appeal.
Marketic and Drmic were supposed to collect EUR 700,000, Tadic Cavar was to coordinate their activities, while Tadic and Jurisic contacted a number of people for information about the case.
After Marketic and Drmic each collected EUR 35,000, Jurisic took the money and was to give it to a person who would influence the approval of Glavas's appeal, but Jurisic did not deliver the money because Marketic and Drmic abandoned the scheme and informed the others about it.
In order to avoid being charged, Marketic and Drmic pressed charges with the Osijek-Baranja County police against an unknown perpetrator for fraud, lying about giving the money to an unknown perpetrator.
