ZAGREB, April 12, 2019 – The Živi Zid parliamentary party on Friday called on the Chief State Prosecutor’s Office (DORH) to investigate the alleged unlawful siphoning of farm subsidies based on suspect registration in the ARKOD register for the identification of farmland and accused the Belje Plus company, a subsidiary of the former Agrokor Group, of taking over the lease of land formerly used by the now defunct Belje company without any legal grounds.
The Živi Zid told a press conference that after the Agrokor conglomerate ceased to exist, about 33,000 hectares of farmland was transferred to the Fortenova Group which has taken over Agrokor’s business operations even though annexes to original lease contracts for that farmland have not been signed with most municipalities and towns where the land is located.
Party leader Ivan Vilibor Sinčić said that the Belje Plus company took over the lease of the land that previously belonged to the Belje company even though it did not meet the necessary criteria. According to regulations, he underscored, it is necessary to present evidence of ownership, which requires annexes to the original contracts which do not exist because the mayors of the municipalities and towns where that land is located have not signed any annexes. It is also necessary to obtain cadastral certificates from documents of title, which also do not exist, he said.
The party’s secretary-general, Tihomir Lukanić, said that according to some estimates, Agrokor took about 150 million kuna in farm subsidies a year. “While the government’s hawks are claiming that the majority of mayors have agreed to and signed the annexes in question, we are getting information from the field that that isn’t true. We conducted a survey and six mayors did not respond, Vinkovci town authorities said that the procedure was underway while 22 towns and municipalities said that they had not signed any annexes,” Lukanić said.
He wondered what the parliamentary Conflict of Interest Commission has been doing for months as it has not responded to the Živi Zid’s report against Prime Minister Andrej Plenković in connection with the Agrokor affair.
More news about Agrokor can be found in the Business section.
