ZAGREB, October 24, 2018 – Prime Minister and HDZ party leader Andrej Plenković said on Tuesday that whoever was plotting against him would not succeed and that the “text message” scandal should be investigated fully.
“Whoever is plotting against me won’t succeed,” Plenković told reporters after a session of his party’s parliamentary group when asked by reporters who he was referring to if what the Nacional weekly published – namely that investigators had found fake documents on former police IT specialist Franjo Varga designed to accuse Plenković of corruption and force him to resign – proved true.
Plenković said that he did not suspect anyone but that he wanted those involved in shedding light on the “text message” affair to fully investigate it. He believes that there are many elements in the case that prove “attempts to destabilise the political scene and make up scandals by going public with fabricated documents.”
Asked about the role of President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović’s advisor on national security, Vlado Galić, in the “text message” affair, Plenković said that he did not know what his role in it was.
The prime minister believes that Galić can make a public statement or address the relevant authorities regarding the matter. Plenković added that he knew Galić but that they were not close friends.
The prime minister would not speculate if Galić had ties with the intelligence milieu, noting that the matter should be dealt with by the Security Intelligence Agency, police and prosecutorial authorities.
Asked if he had discussed the latest information in this affair with HDZ deputy president Milijan Brkić, Plenković recalled that he had discussed the matter with him before but that Brkić then denied having anything to do with it.
Plenković would not give a straightforward answer when asked to comment on President Grabar-Kitarović’s statement that she would decide whether to run for a second term in office after next year’s elections for the European Parliament and whether he would wait for her to decide until then, saying: “I believe that she and I have understood each other well. I have no dilemmas, I think I know what she will decide.”
Asked to comment on the N1 broadcaster releasing more e-mails between former economy minister Martina Dalić and lawyer Branimir Bricelj in the Hotmail affair, which show that Lex Agrokor was changed at the last moment to favour the U.S. fund Knighthead, Plenković said that Economy Minister Darko Horvat would submit a report on Agrokor’s operations in the last few months on Wednesday, reiterating that the government had made a very good legal framework in a short period of time to salvage the company.
He stressed that it was important that small family farms that were among Agrokor’s suppliers had been paid, that jobs had been saved, and that small and medium companies doing business with Agrokor had had the time to recover from the Agrokor crisis and survive, as well as that agreement had been reached with Agrokor’s creditors on debt settlement and that now the company was operating well. He noted that it was important that the relevant authorities had stated their position on the affair.
