ZAGREB, September 19, 2020 – President Zoran Milanovic said on Saturday, in a comment on the JANAF corruption scandal, that he did not understand why JANAF CEO Dragan Kovacevic and businessman Kreso Petek were not arrested at the moment when Kovacevic received a bribe of HRK 1.96 million from Petek.
“I don’t understand why this did not stop at the moment when it was found out through surveillance that someone was giving someone two million kuna in bribes. That should have been the end of the story, you have a case, you have physical evidence. That’s what I would like to know,” Milanovic said when asked about the investigation into the case in which public tenders were allegedly rigged to favour Petek’s company.
Petek is charged with having bribed Kovacevic in November 2019 with HRK 1.96 million to win several jobs for his company. At the moment when the money was handed over, police rather closely recorded the circumstances in which Petek took the money to Kovacevic.
Kovacevic was Milanovic’s rival in a 2008 election for the president of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), after which he joined the Croatian People’s Party (HNS), and Milanovic confirmed today that the two of them had a lunch together a few months ago.
“We are not close friends, but we have been on good terms,” said the president.
Considering that Kovacevic was appointed to head JANAF during his government’s term, Milanovic said that Kovacevic was appointed JANAF CEO in 2012 by Radimir Cacic.
The president also commented on Standard & Poor’s having affirmed Croatia’s investment grade, saying that what the agency said was good but that agency ratings were a matter of the past.
“At a time when money is practically free, their forecasts do not mean anything. More important is what we know and the data we have, and next year should be a year of recovery and growth provided the situation with the coronavirus calms down,” said Milanovic, who attended an event marking the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the northwestern Croatia in World War II.
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