ZAGREB, April 25, 2018 – A member of the Krško nuclear power plant (NEK) management board Hrvoje Perharić on Tuesday dismissed claims by Croatian People’s Party (HNS) leader Ivan Vrdoljak that the criminal report Perharić filed against Vrdoljak for threatening him was based on false claims, that Perharić did not respect an international agreement and that he was in a conflict of interest.
The Zagreb Municipal Court has upheld an indictment from November 2017 charging Vrdoljak with threatening Perharić and insisting that he resign from the board of the Krško nuclear power plant. Vrdoljak has denied the charges, accusing Perharić of working in Slovenia’s interest and of causing Croatia financial damage worth two billion kuna by not respecting an international agreement.
“I confirm that Mr Ivan Vrdoljak phoned and threatened me in his capacity as economy minister in 2015. The criminal report was filed based on a truthful statement,” Perharić said in a comment on Vrdoljak’s claims. “Why didn’t Vrdoljak share his allegations with his coalition partners before?”
With regard to the alleged disregard for an international agreement that was to Croatia’s detriment, Perharić claimed that Vrdoljak’s allegations were based on a separate page of a report adopted at a session of NEK’s management board on the implementation of the international agreement, adding that there had not been any objections to the report at the session which Vrdoljak himself had attended.
Perharić added that the alleged amount of damage to Croatia Vrdoljak was bandying around was ridiculous. “Mr Vrdoljak signed a joint record stating that the implementation of the international agreement was proceeding successfully and responsibly and that very good operational, security, economic and investment results had been achieved,” Perharić noted and asked why Vrdoljak did not have any objections at the time or share his doubts with his coalition partners.
With reference to the Slovenian representative on NEK’s management board refusing to dismiss him from the management board, Perharić said that Vrdoljak had aggressively tried to impose, for the post of a NEK management board member, “his incompetent candidate, blatantly ignoring the fact that analyses showed that the Chernobyl and Fukushima accidents were due to disastrous decisions by incompetent people.”
He added that the Slovenian member of the NEK management board did not accept his replacement because the candidate proposed by Vrdoljak’s did not meet even the minimum criteria.
Perharić also denied claims that he was in a conflict of interest, saying that he was not the founder and did he have any shares in the Enconet company which has been NEK’s subcontractor for nearly 30 years. He explained that he did establish the Enteko company, however, that company never had anything to do with Enconet. Perharić said that Enteko’s founding capital was transferred to Enconet prior to his appointment to NEK’s management board.
