Anto Nobilo, defence attorney for former Deputy Prime Minister Damir Polancec, has said that he hopes that the Office of the Chief State Prosecutor (DORH) will carry out a much better investigation of national chief of police Oliver Grbic than the one carried out by the Interior Ministry's Internal Affairs Department which found no evidence for Polancec's claim that Grbic had suggested that he write anonymous reports against Opposition politicians.
"I didn't expect anything else to happen and I knew this would end this way. In a situation when Grbic has kept his post and has not been suspended and when Minister of the Interior Tomislav Karamarko, who is above the Internal Affairs Department, publicly exculpates Grbic, one could not have expected the police to do something different," Nobilo told reporters outside the Zagreb County Court at the end of the first day of the trial of Polancec and seven other persons indicted for fraud in the Podravka food company.
"I don't know what the Internal Affairs Department did, but I know that they didn't use the lie detector even though police officers, as well as intelligence agents, must take the lie detector even for far less serious offences," Nobilo said.
He said that the Internal Affairs Department had only investigated if Grbic had suggested that his client Polancec write anonymous reports against Opposition politicians, but not Polancec's claim that the most senior police officials had kept leaders of the ruling HDZ party informed about the particulars of reports and investigations.
Interior Ministry spokesman Krunoslav Borovec said on Tuesday that the Internal Affairs Department had established that there were no substantial grounds to corroborate the allegations against the chief of police.
The findings of a seven-day check made by the internal affairs department were sent to DORH which should now decide on steps to be taken next.
Apart from Polancec, Social Democratic Party official Slavko Linic, too, has accused Grbic of being behind an anonymous report alleging that Linic had misused funds intended for the purchase of arms for the defence of the city of Rijeka in 1991.
The allegations prompted President Ivo Josipovic to recently request a session of the National Security Council. At the session held on 31 May, the Council called on all relevant bodies to check reports of alleged abuse of judicial institutions and to report to the Council about their findings.
Grbic has dismissed the allegations against him.
