Former Croatian ambassador in Washington and permanent representative to the UN Neven Jurica was sentenced to 18 months' imprisonment pending appeal on Thursday for spending a minimum HRK 677,000 in diplomatic mission money to pay private bills.
A Zagreb County Court panel of judges chaired by Ivan Turudic also banned Jurica from working in diplomacy for five years.
The national anti-corruption office USKOK accused the former ambassador, who asked to be relieved of duty last July, of abuse of office. The media alleged that he used the money for gambling as well.
The court interpreted the fact that he returned the money in the meantime as admission that he had spent taxpayers' money without authorisation while performing a honourable duty.
In the closing statements before the sentence was handed down, USKOK representative Mladen Krajacic asked that Jurica be convicted and banned from working in diplomacy, while Jurica's counsel Rajko Mlinaric argued that guilt had not been proven and that his client should be acquitted.
Jurica defended himself by saying that he spent the money for official and not personal purposes, but that he kept irregular cost records, which prompted him to return the debt to the government.
He was indicted in late November after a five-month investigation launched when the Foreign Ministry pressed charges against him for irregularities in the financial operations of Croatia's Permanent Mission to the UN. Jurica asked to be relieved of duty, which the parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee supported in late July, suggesting that then President Stjepan Mesic relieve Jurica of duty. Mesic had said a number of time that he was unhappy with Jurica's performance and recalled him in early September.
