Ivo Sanader, former Croatian Prime Minister who now sits in the national parliament (Sabor) as an independent deputy, on Friday called on the Sabor to set up a commission to probe allegations made by Damir Polancec that Vladimir Seks, a Sabor Deputy Speaker and vice-president of the ruling Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), had offered him a more lenient sentence if he accused Sanader of white collar crime.
Sanader also demanded that such a commission also investigate the role of the current Prime Minister and HDZ leader, Jadranka Kosor, in the case.
Sanader on Friday held a news conference in the parliament following media speculations that a former customs administration's chief, Mladen Barisic, has accused him of having received money syphoned off from public companies at the time when he was Prime Minister.
Dismissing the media speculations, the former premier said that such reports were part of the "political programme of Jadranka Kosor", his successor in the post of Prime Minister.
Sanader said that Kosor had lost public support and that "she has practically shown that she is incapable of running the government."
Kosor "is incapable of dealing with the serious economic situation and of pulling the country out of the crisis, which is why she is orchestrating political persecution in order to shift public attention from the real problems that are troubling citizens," Sanader said at the news conference.
He said that Kosor was being assisted by Seks in enforcing "undemocratic and anti-constitutional methods".
The best example is the case of Damir Polancec, who was blackmailed and offered freedom in return for a false testimony against me, Sanader said, adding that Judge Ivan Turudic obviously was to have had a role in this.
The Zagreb County Court recently sentenced Polancec, a former Deputy Prime Minister and Economy Minister, to 15 months in prison pending appeal for paying Vukovar attorney Petar Miletic half a million kuna of budget funds for an unnecessary expert study. The panel of judges, presided over by Judge Ivan Turudic, sentenced Miletic to one year in prison pending appeal, ordering that he and Polancec pay back the amount in question.
