The parliamentary Conflict of Interest Commission decided on Friday that the director-general of the HRT public broadcaster, Goran Radman, was in conflict of interest because he failed to specify all his property in his declaration of assets, including a hotel in Slovenia.
Commission chair Dalija Oreskovic said that all office holders were required to declare their property and that of their immediate family. In the case of Radman, the Commission had not verified the information on additional assets, so it invited him to add such information to his declaration, she said, stressing that it was not the Commission's duty to determine the origin of office holders' property.
On July 2 Radman formally asked the Commission whether in his declaration of assets, which he had submitted on June 3, he had to list all his property, noting that the declaration form did not provide clear instructions as to whether property abroad should also be included.
Citing the Conflict of Interest Prevention Act, Oreskovic said that office holders were required within 30 days of taking office to report on the duties they performed either in a professional or non-professional capacity and the duties they had performed immediately before taking office and to declare their assets and those of their spouse or partner and underage children.
The Jutarnji List newspaper said in an article in its July 2 issue that Radman owns 98.7 per cent of the Vila Park Hotel at Lake Bohinj in Slovenia which he did not mention in his declaration of assets. On the same day Radman addressed a request to the Conflict of Interest Commission asking whether he should have declared all his property, including that in Slovenia.
According to the Slovenian register of companies AJPES, Radman is a 98.7% owner of the Vila Park Hotel at Lake Bohinj. His company bought the hotel in 2003 for 648,765 euros from the Croatian Social Democratic Party (SDP) which inherited the property from the former Croatian League of Communists after the break-up of the Yugoslav federation.
The Conflict of Interest Commission has earlier fined Radman 15,000 kuna (2,000 euros) for failing to submit his declaration of assets in time. It said then that Radman was in a potential conflict of interest as the owner and founder of a firm whose clients advertise their products and services on the HRT and as a member of the Supervisory Board of Hypo Alpe Adria Bank and the Appointments and Awards Committee of the functional food and drink producer Atlantic Group. After that, on June 3, Radman submitted his declaration of assets without mentioning his ownership of the lakeside hotel in Slovenia.
