Izvor: N1 televizija, 23.Avg.2018, 10:37   (ažurirano 02.Apr.2020.)

N1 publishes Dalic deposition to investigators on Agrokor

Transcripts of a deposition by Croatia's former Economy Minister Martina Dalic show that then Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic and Finance Minister Zdravko Maric were informed about the situation in the Agrokor company before the crisis broke out.

Dalic told investigators from the anti-corruption police unit Uskok that Plenkovic was informed about meetings held to discuss the Agrokor problem while her advisor Zoran Besak said that Maric received a report on the state of Agrokor from >> Pročitaj celu vest na sajtu N1 televizija << that company's CEO Ivica Todoric.

Dalic told investigators that she personally prevented the publication of a transcript of a meeting held to analyze the situation in Agrokor, saying that the largest company in the country was in danger of collapse.

She said that the leaders of the ruling HDZ party held a meeting at which Prime Minister Plenkovic presented the problem and ways to handle it. "I was told by HDZ deputy leader Miljan Brkic that I had the political backing to solve the problem," Dalic said.

The transcripts reveal a number of contentious points regarding the process through which Prime Minister Plenkovic's government tried to handle the threat of bakruptcy at the food and retail group Agrokor, the largest single company in the country at the time.

After the depositions were made to USKOK investigators in February 2017, the state prosecutor's office DORH dismissed formal charges filed against Dalic in June, by the opposition parties Zivi Zid and Slobodna Hrvatska, the suspicion of conflict of interest.

Deputy Prime Minister and Economy Minister Martina Dalic handed in her resignation in May 2018 after news portal Index.hr had published e-mail correspondence between her and the consultants and lawyers who had worked on drafting the controversial Lex Agrokor bill in early 2017.

The law was passed in April that year, and it allowed the government to temporary take over the management of the indebted food and retail group Agrokor. Before the crisis at Agrokor developed, the company employed some 60,000 people in dozens of its subsidiaries across the region, with its annual revenue at around €7 billion, or almost 15 percent of Croatia’s GDP.

The total debt claims against Agrokor, from hundreds of creditors which include local banks, suppliers, and bondholders, were around 58 billion kuna (€7.8 billion), with the single largest creditor Russia's Sberbank, which held a €1.1 billion claim.

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