The owner and director of the Skladgradnja construction company, Slaven Zuzul, a former director of the highway operator Autocesta Rijeka-Zagreb (ARZ), Jurica Prskalo, and ARZ Management Board member Zlatko Korpar, have been remanded in custody for a month as the investigating judge in the case believes there is a risk that they could tamper with 15 witnesses who are to be questioned in an investigation into fraudulent activities worth 11.5 million kuna, believed to have occurred during construction work on several sections and facilities of the Rijeka-Zagreb highway in 2006.
Investigating judge Zoran Luburic opened an investigation into the three men on suspicion that Prskalo and Korpar abused their powers and that Zuzul incited them to abuse of powers. Also under investigation is Skladgradnja, which is why Luburic today also questioned the company's legal representative, attorney Ante Madunic of Zagreb.
Prskalo has been in custody since the end of March when he was arrested together with a former member of the management of the HAC highway operator, Mario Lovrincevic, on suspicion that he defrauded the company by signing a harmful contract with Skladgradnja to build a rest area near the future highway to Ploce. In that case, Judge Jadranka Mandusic today released both men from custody, but unlike Lovrincevic, who was released from detention, Prskalo will remain behind bars following Judge Luburic's decision.
The 49-year-old ARZ Management Board chair Prskalo and 44-year-old ARZ Management Board member Korpar are suspected of having paid to Zuzul's company in 2006 HRK 11.5 million more than the value of work done by his company on the Rijeka-Zagreb highway. They are charged with having changed the initially agreed way of calculating the cost of work on some highway facilities to Skladgradnja's advantage, knowing that there would be much less work to be done than envisaged by design documentation. Zuzul's company was at the time a subcontractor for the Viadukt-Konstruktor-Strabag consortium.
The suspects presented their defence before the investigating judge, denying the charges.
As in previous cases, in which he was accused of charging more for the work done by his company than the actual value of the work, Zuzul said that his company was only a subcontractor in projects agreed by bigger construction companies.
This is the third case in which Zuzul is a suspect. The first time, he was arrested with Prskalo and some other HAC executives on suspicion of involvement in wrongdoing in a deal to paint the Mala Kapela and Sveti Rok tunnels, and last year he was arrested on suspicion of syphoning money from the Brodosplit shipyard.
Prskalo was previously suspected of having defrauded HAC, together with Prskalo, in a corruption case named after the Fimi Media marketing agency.
