Croatian President Ivo Josipovic and Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic said on Monday that the scandal concerning the inspection of printouts of phone records had not undermined national security and that the report they had received on the matter did not indicate that members of organised crime groups were infiltrated in the country's security and law enforcement apparatus.
"The report, which is confidential so I cannot discuss its content, does not implicate anything like that," Josipovic said at a news conference he held together with PM Milanovic following media reports on the unlawful provision of telephone printouts concerning security intelligence officers and private business people.
Milanovic said that he had also come to the conclusion that "people, who are rightfully regarded as members of organised crime groups, are now nervous and insecure".
"It is natural that organised crime rings try to make contact with senior officials in the executive branch, in the police and in the secret services. In weak countries it is common but in strong countries it is inconceivable and impossible. We are on the road towards becoming a strong state," PM said.
Milanovic said that the point was the struggle against organised crime and "bad guys", and Josipovic underlined the importance of multi-institutional control of the security system. The two officials stressed that there had been no breach of the law.
Josipovic and Milanovic held their joint press conference on Monday following the scandal involving printouts of telephone calls, saying that the police had not violated the law in the course of their duties. The press conference, held in the President's Office, was prompted by a newspaper article on the unauthorised provision of telephone records concerning senior intelligence officials and executives of the Agrokor food and retail group.
The President and the Prime Minister said they had decided together to relieve Petar Misevic as head of the Office of the National Security Council and to appoint Dragan Lozancic as new director of the Security and Intelligence Agency (SOA). They added that they would announce soon who would succeed Misevic.
Asked by reporters why Misevic was dismissed, Josipovic cited discrepancies between previous and the latest reports which, he said, indicated that supervision had not been efficient enough and that it had failed to provide all data that now cropped up.
