ZAGREB, July 12, 2019 – The State Assets Ministry on Friday denied claims made in an article headlined “Goran Marić’s conflict of interest? Enabling former boss in whose apartment his son lives to purchase attractive land,” in the Jutarnji List daily, claiming that someone is trying to impute conflict of interest on Minister Goran Marić with regard to the dissolution of co-ownership of state land.
The Jutarnji List claims that in May, Marić decided to sell over 13,000 square metres of land to companies related to Željko Udovičić, the owner of the company that owns the building in which Minster Marić’s son is currently living. The land is located in Brsečine near Dubrovnik in a construction zone on the seashore and earmarked for a tourism resort and is valued at HRK 5.092 million.
The land accounts for just of 19% that Udovičić’s company required, to be in a position to be registered as the sole owners of the land, which until then had been co-owned with the state, the daily said.
The state agreed to be registered as the sole owner of unattractive land above the road while the rest of the land was sold to Udovičić’s companies, the article noted.
The State Assets Ministry claimed that the article was trying to impute conflict of interest onto Marić regarding the dissolution of co-ownership.
“The dispute over the right of ownership of land between the Republic of Croatia and Sikirica d.o.o. and Valeta d.o.o. (companies owned by Udovičić) has been ongoing for 10 years. As the state lost one of three suits, the county prosecution settled with the said companies for land that was defined as being co-owned in such a way that, of two plots, one went to the state with an area of approximately 0.7 hectares and the other, went to the said companies with an area of 6.8 hectares,” the ministry said in a press release.
The Office of the County State Prosecutor referred the companies to the State Assets Ministry for the purpose of dissolving the co-ownership and that was processed in regular procedure as is the case with hundreds of similar cases of dissolution and in the most transparent way possible, the press release added.
“The dissolution finally resolved any further damage being caused to Croatia and enabled an income into the state budget in the amount of 5.092 million kuna,” the ministry underscored, adding that Minister Marić never in any way influenced that decision.
The ministry added that the owners of the Valeta d.o.o. and Sikirica d.o.o. are not the owners of the companies with which Marić’s son signed a lease agreement for the apartment he is living in.
More news about the state assets minister can be found in the Politics section.
