ZAGREB, January 30, 2019 – The Supreme Court has rejected an appeal by Tomislav Saucha, a former chief-of-staff in the prime minister’s office, who has requested that the assessment of his signature in the travel expenses scandal be pulled out of the case file.
Saucha’s defence attorney, Darko Maržić briefly conformed this information to Hina.
Saucha’s defence lodged an appeal with the Supreme Court after the trial chamber in Zagreb County Court on 19 September refused to withdraw evidence with Saucha’s signature, claiming the graphoanalysis of those signatures was inadmissible.
The indictment against Saucha was returned to the USKOK anti-corruption office in March 2018 to be amended following a request by the defence that the graphoanalysis of Saucha’s signatures was inadmissible.
USKOK has accused Saucha that while he was the chief-of-staff in former prime minister Zoran Milnanović’s office he defrauded the state budget, together with his then secretary, Sandra Zeljko, and in that way illegally gained over 580,000 kuna.
In an extended investigation USKOK further suspected Saucha of sharing the fabricated allowances with Zeljko, the then ‘crown witness’ in the case.
USKOK suspects Zeljko of having continued to collect fictitious travel expenses even after the end of Saucha’s term in the government, saying that in March 2016 she forged the signatures of Saucha’s successors Neven Zelić and Davor Božinović collecting nearly 350,000 kuna in fictitious travel expenses.
More news on the scandal can be found in the Politics section.
