Prosecutors accuse suspects of ‘accepting and giving bribes, abuse of place and authority and cash laundering’.
Croatia’s prime minister has fired Well being Minister Vili Beros following his arrest on suspicion of corruption as a part of a European Union investigation.
“This morning, former Minister Vili Beros and two different people have been arrested as a part of an operation carried out” by anticorruption officers, Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic instructed a information convention on Friday.
“As prime minister, I’m personally appalled by the concept that anybody within the healthcare system would use their place both for private enrichment or to favour another person inside the healthcare system,” Plenkovic mentioned.
The European Public Prosecutor’s Workplace (EPPO) within the capital, Zagreb, mentioned it had launched an investigation into eight individuals, together with Beros and the administrators of two hospitals.
The EU’s impartial public prosecution workplace accused the suspects, and two firms, of “accepting and giving bribes, abuse of place and authority and cash laundering”, it mentioned in a press release.
“Mr Beros fully denies any felony accountability,” his lawyer Laura Vakovic instructed journalists.
Plenkovic, who was re-elected in April, mentioned, “We as a authorities haven’t and won’t defend anybody from felony prosecution if they’re suspected of committing felony acts, no matter who which may be or which obligation they’ve.”
Between June 2022 and November 2024, 5 of the suspects tried to “safe undue monetary good points” in a scheme involving the sale of medical robotic gadgets for a number of hospitals in Croatia, prosecutors mentioned.
The suspects additionally provided bribes to control the general public procurement course of, in keeping with the EPPO.
This was tried on a minimum of 4 events however didn’t work within the case of an EU-funded challenge within the coastal city of Cut up, the place their bribe was refused, the prosecutors mentioned.
Within the different three cases in varied hospitals in Zagreb, “there are allegations that the minister of well being, in change for a bribe obtained, issued approvals for the acquisition of working microscopes at unreasonably inflated costs, and supplied funds for public procurement.”
The value was “unjustifiably elevated by [$654,000] to the detriment of the Croatian nationwide price range,” the prosecutors added.
Croatia’s Workplace for the Suppression of Corruption and Organised Crime (USKOK) confirmed the arrests with out figuring out the suspects.
Beros was appointed to the put up after his predecessor, Milan Kujundzic, was sacked in January 2020 over his hyperlinks to a case involving undeclared belongings.
Since taking energy in 2016, a number of ministers from the prime minister’s conservative Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) celebration have stepped down amid corruption allegations.
Croatia has had extreme issues with systemic and political corruption. It’s usually ranked by worldwide anticorruption teams as one of the most corrupt states among the many 27 EU member international locations.
