What is Andrej Plenković hiding since bringing Todorić to the State Attorney’s Office who is willing to stop any possibility of an investigation concerning AP?
From day to day Prime Minister Andrej Plenković continues to lie, believing that when a lie is told a hundred times it will become the truth. It won’t. In an attempt to defend what cannot be defended – i.e. the election of Ivan Turudić to the post of State Attorney-General – denies facts, violates laws, accuses others and is contrary to common sense.
Let’s start with the facts that Plenković denies, and on account of which Turudić should never have even been nominated, let alone elected State Attorney-General because he is a man who doesn’t even fulfil minimum conditions for the post. Turudić is a person with no morals, a proven liar, a political junkie dependent on the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), minion of the underworld. As president of the Zagreb County Court, he secretly met with a man being investigated by that same court. As a judge he socialized and corresponded with a suspect of the Office for Suppression of Corruption and Organized Crime (USKOK), disclosed information to her and negotiated concessions. He lied to the Croatian Parliament. And he has certainly done a lot more that is immoral, suspect and harmful to the state. What has already been mentioned is sufficient for him to be disqualified from the public call for the post of State Attorney-General. Plenković knows all of this, he can hear and read, yet does nothing but persist in the dangerous intention to install such an obscure individual at the helm of the State Attorney’s Office.
In doing so, Plenković is consciously violating laws that, with reason, prescribe that the person to be nominated and elected to the State Attorney’s Office must have a background check. And they should, clearly, in order to prevent an immoral liar and partner of criminals such as the one Plenković is nominating for this important post. The Law on the State Attorney’s Council, the Law on the State Attorney’s Office and the Law on Background Checks are clear and only Plenković reads these laws as he wishes, and in fact violates them. Already in the first step, in the Public call of the State Attorney’s Council it is clearly stated that a candidate that wants to be State Attorney-General but does not come from the State Attorney-General structure must attach a handwritten consent for a background check. Turudić does not come from the State Attorney-General structure, therefore this refers to him as well.
Why did Turudić have to give a handwritten consent for a background check? In order for the background check to be carried out in a lawful manner. The State Attorney’s Council has confirmed this now. After claiming for days that he requested a background check, Plenković is presently affirming that he has no legal powers to request a background check for Ivan Turudić. The phony goes so far as to delete traces and evidence of his lies from the Government’s official website, thinking that by deleting his claim that he requested a background check (which he did not), he made his second lie – that he cannot request a background check for Turudić (which he can) – credible and accurate.
As Prime Minister of the Government that nominates the State Attorney-General to the Croatian Parliament, Plenković not only can, is authorized – in accordance with the Law on Background Checks – but is obliged to request a background check for a candidate who himself, and we again stress, has given a handwritten consent to have a background check. It’s very important to know consequently we underline: every background check is done for a specific office or post, and the content of the background check is adapted to it! Which means that a background check for a judge is not the same as a background check for the state attorney-general. Evidently a flawed and questionable background check for Turudić as a judge in 2019, therefore it cannot substitute a background check for Turudić as a candidate for State Attorney-General.
It is however clear why Plenković did not want to request a background check now: because he wanted at all costs to hide the facts and information about Turudić, his late night sessions with Zdravko Mamić, and especially his close encounters of a special kind with Josipa Rimac. A new background check would reveal that Turudić never stopped socializing with the political and criminal underground, it would reveal all he has done after 2019. Because that new background check, by law, would have to be seen and read by the President of the Republic too so it would not be possible that important information about Turudić’s socializing with persons under investigation would disappear from the background check. And all of that would be a serious security risk for Plenković to nominate him and the Croatian Parliament to elect him State Attorney-General. By acting contrary to law, by avoiding his legal obligations to do a background check of his candidate for State Attorney-General, Plenković has made the election of State Attorney-General illegal and, for that reason, Turudić cannot assume the office of State Attorney-General.
Instead of withdrawing his unlawful attack on the State Attorney-General’s Office – after receiving new information on Turudić from the President of the Republic and the media that undoubtedly present a security risk for his election – Plenković further sinks into the political mire and defends himself by attacking others, just like thieves always do, Plenković now yells – catch a thief. Then he singles out the president of the Supreme Court because before being elected to that post a background check was not done. It is absurd to compare these two cases for a number of reasons. There is absolutely no similarity between Dobronić and Turudić. Judge Dobronić must not be put in the same sentence at all with, let’s not forget, a person such as Turudić without morals, a proven liar, a political junkie dependent on the HDZ and minion of the underworld.
Moreover, every judge does his job and makes his decisions based on documents that are always available to the prosecution and the defense alike, and judicial decisions are subject to the oversight of higher courts, including the European Court. The State Attorney-General is not accountable to anyone for his decisions, outside of the State Attorney’s Office there is no oversight of the decisions made, as for example a decision as to who and why someone will be prosecuted and processed or, even more important, who and why someone will not be prosecuted and processed.
Out of obvious fear, Plenković is hysterically also attacking the State Attorney’s Office, the Office for Suppression of Corruption and Organized Crime (USKOK), the State Attorney’s Council and all institutions that are stating facts and acting in accordance with the law.
And here we come to the key question: what is Plenković hiding? Besides hiding the truth that Turudić is a person without any morals, a proven liar, a political junkie dependent on the HDZ and minion of the underworld, with the election of Turudić Plenković wants to conceal facts that could result in his criminal prosecution! Fearing his own prosecution is evidently the reason for such a hasty, defective, pre-election and unprecedented operation of a party’s occupation of the State Attorney’s Office. Ivan Turudić has proven up to now that he is prepared to socialize with criminals. There is no doubt that he is prepared to protect them too. Already in his initial appearances, the new anointee of Plenković attacked the European Public Prosecutor’s Office which, let’s remind you, launched investigations against two of Plenković’s ministers.
For this reason Andrej Plenković is bringing to the State Attorney’s Office a man who is willing to stop any possibility of an investigation concerning AP.
Andrej Plenković is wrong to think that the appointment of Turudić is ad acta because uncovering crime and corruption is not and cannot be ad acta, given that other state institutions and ultimately citizens also have a say in it.