INA CEO Bojan Milkovic will be placed in investigative custody for a month due to the risk of his tampering with witness who are to be interviewed in an ongoing investigation into Milkovic, who is suspected of bribe taking, reporters learned from Zagreb County Court investigating judge Ratko Scekic who made the detention ruling after Milkovic presented his position on the charges.
Judge Scekic said that about 20 witnesses would be interviewed in the investigation into the reported bribe-taking.
The judge ruled month-long detention also for the other suspect in the case, Miroslav Pacak, but since Pacak is not in Croatia, the anti-corruption agency USKOK, which is conducting the investigation, will ask the police to issue a warrant for his arrest, said Scekic.
Milkovic's attorney Goran Mikulicic told press that he would request that Milkovic be placed under house arrest instead of investigative custody.
Mikulicic said his client gave a detailed statement to USKOK, denying responsibility for what he was being charged with. The attorney said USKOK would question a number of witnesses of whom only two or three could be considered "relevant".
USKOK opened the investigation into Milkovic on the suspicion that he took bribes at the time when he was a sector director at the Crosco company and later as Crosco's Management Board chairman, in collusion with Pacak, a former platform overhaul project manager at Crosco.
Crosco is an on- and offshore drilling and well services contractor which is part of INA Group.
Milkovic and Pacak are suspected of having solicited bribes, in the period from 2002 to 2009, in exchange for awarding job contracts to other companies. The bribes ranged from 5 to 10 percent of the net contract value.
The persons who were asked to give bribes did so in order to win tenders which they needed so their businesses could continue operating, USKOK said.
