Croatian Municipal Officials Indicted for Graft

The Bureau for Combating Corruption and Organised Crime, USKOK, filed its latest indictment against Bozidar Kalmeta, the mayor of the Croatian coastal town of Zadar, on Friday.

This follows the anti-fraud body's indictments of Zagreb mayor Milan Bandic and former Sisak-Moslavina county prefect Marina Lovric Merzel on Wednesday.

Kalmeta is being probed for alleged corrupt activities while he was maritime affairs, transport and infrastructure minister between 2005 and 2010, during which he is accused of leading a group of 12 people who embezzled some four million euro.

A member of the opposition centre-right Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ, Kalmeta was minister during the first mandate of now-incarcerated former Prime Minister Ivo Sanader, who was sentenced to eight-and-a-half years in prison for taking a 10 million euro bribe. Kalmeta remained minister when Jadranka Kosor took over as prime minister in July 2009.

Bandic meanwhile is accused of illegally aiding a conservative NGO called In the Name of Family, which allegedly cost the city of Zagreb some 40,000 euro. The NGO was behind a successful campaign for a referendum to legally define marriage as a union between a man and a woman, effectively outlawing same-sex marriages.

He was initially arrested back in October 2014 over accusations that he was involved in a range of corrupt activities in the city administration, and of embezzling some 2.6 million euro.

Merzel Lovric, who is also an MP, is accused of involvement in wrongdoing that cost the Sisak-Moslavina county budget some 1.7 million euro.

She resigned as perfect of the county in August 2014 during her five months in remand prison. She also lost her membership of governing centre-left Social Democratic Party, SDP,...

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