"The Ministry is cooperating with the State Prosecutor's Office and we have forwarded all documents to them. We shall see if the deal was clean or not," Kotromanovic told the press at a conference on Croatia's NATO membership in Zagreb.

The minister added that the Prosecutor's Office had not yet asked to talk to ministry officials concerning the circumstance of the purchase of armoured vehicles from Patria in 2007, worth EUR 112 million. It is believed that Patria managers attempted to bribe Croatian officials during the sale of Patria's armoured vehicles to Croatia.

The Croatian Army Chief of Staff, Lieutenant General Drago Lovric, said he was "not the right person to be asked questions about the Patria case", stressing however that the Patria vehicles were necessary for the Croatian Army.

The media reported on Monday evening that the crime police investigation into the alleged bribery of Croatian officials during the 2007 purchase of armoured vehicles from Finland's biggest arms manufacturer Patria led to the President's Office.

Croatian Television and Jutarnji List daily cited an unnamed source who confirmed that the police had requested a registry of visitors in the President's Office.

This way, Jutarnji List said, the police wanted to verify allegation made by Wolgang Riedl, Patria's go-between person during the sale of armoured vehicles in Slovenia and for a short period of time in Croatia as well, about meetings that allegedly took place in the Office of the President during the time when Stjepan Mesic was in office.

Riedl told investigators the names of people in Croatia to whom he gave bribes, after which investigators started checking his claims.

The media claims that the Office of the President was included the the process of purchasing armoured vehicles and that Mesic, as the supreme commander, was very well informed of the events and that given his position he could have directly influenced the selection of the weapons providers.