Former Deputy Prime Minister Damir Polancec on Tuesday pleaded guilty in a case dubbed "Floodlights" and plea-bargained with the Office for the Suppression of Corruption and Organised Crime (USKOK), after which he was given a suspended sentence of one year in prison.
The suspended sentence in this case means that Polancec will not go to prison if he does not commit a new criminal act in the next four years.
Leaving the court, Polancec told reporters that he was ready to assume responsibility for his personal actions, but that he did not want to be the scapegoat and take on himself "the sins of the entire government and the HDZ presidency".
Polancec plea-bargained with USKOK at a preparatory hearing after which a date for the start of the trial in this case was to have been set.
The other two indictees in the case, Zeljko Drazic and Tomislav Andabak, had previously reached plea agreements with the prosecution. They were each given suspended sentences of 15 months in prison.
Polancec was charged with having used his office as Deputy Prime Minister to agree the installation of floodlights on a soccer field owned by a soccer club in his home town of Djelekovec near Koprivnica. The job was agreed with a company whose director he then instructed to send the bill to Drazic, CEO of the Zagreb-Montaza company, who then agreed with Andabak, head of the SKY Office project in Zagreb, to issue an invoice falsely stating as the purpose of payment electrical installation work that was never done.
Polancec was also charged with trying to cover up abuse of office by asking the company that installed floodlights on the soccer field, in January this year, to issue a new bill and send it to the local soccer club.
He then personally paid HRK 235,000 (approx. EUR 32,300) into the club's bank account, and in January this year the club paid HRK 230,000 to the company that set up the floodlights.
Polancec said today that he had only been helping his home town and was sorry not to have been able to do more for it. He added that nearly 70 percent of the money used to install the floodlights was his own money and that nobody else had been caused any financial damage.
Polancec was recently sentenced to 15 months in prison pending appeal for commissioning an unnecessary expert study from Vukovar lawyer Petar Miletic for which his ministry paid half a million kuna (approx. EUR 68,700).
He is awaiting trial for malfeasance in the Podravka food company.
He is also a suspect in an investigation into the HEP power company. In that case, Polancec, former HEP CEO Ivan Mravak and a former CEO of the TLM company from Sibenik, Ivan Kostan, are suspected of having defrauded HEP of HRK 600 million.
