Defence Ministry Failed to Produce Documents

A memo from the General Staff which, back in July, before the commission was established in September, requested the annulment of the tender

ZAGREB, CROATIA – A part of documents that the Croatian parliament’s investigative commission for probing the purchase of 39 military trucks requested of the Defence Ministry has not been produced, members of the commission established at today’s session. The session was led by SDP’s Nenad Stazic and for two hours members of the ruling coalition and the opposition squabbled about what their job really was and how they should do it. The opposition once again criticised members of the Croatian democratic Union (HDZ) for disrupting the work of the investigative commission so it would not be able to complete its job within the three months it has been given. 

Where are the documents? 

The subject of the session were activities from the issuing of the tender for the purchase of the trucks to the decision of a Defence Minister’s assistant that the tender be cancelled. The documentation that is lacking include the tender for the purchase with specifications of the wanted vehicles, as well as the bids the bidders offered. HNS’s Goran Beus Richemberg found in the memo on the work of the Defence Ministry’s commission that Major Zeljko Keskic also mentioned a memo from the Armed Forces General Staff dated July 29, 2004, which requested the annulment of the issued tender and a direct deal, although the tender commission was established only on September 30, 2004.

This memo is not contained in the file presented to parliament. Former defence minister Andrija Hebrang said the file was not all that important and that he knew from experience that such memos are sent from the General Staff requesting a direct purchase deal, which is not illegal, to speed up the purchase process “because they are always in a rush to get what they need”.

Hurry without rushing 

- If it is like Hebrang says, that the General Staff frequently requests the speeding up of the process and direct deals, then it is not clear why it took 39 days to cancel the tender from the commission’s session on November 4, 2004. therefore, nobody was in a hurry – Beus Richemberg said.

SDP’s Nenad Stazic noticed that a report by the head of the commission on the purchase of trucks, Ojdana Zuzul, was also missing from the documents. Based on her report, the assistant defence minister made the decision to cancel the tender on December 15, 2004.

This is the investigative commission’s third session. The first two focused on determining the rule book and a decision was made to request the documents from the Defence Ministry, the General Staff, the President’s Office and the State Audit Bureau. Today, they began discussing the issue itself, which was a memo by the General Staff dated December 29, 2003, requesting the purchase of non-combatant vehicles necessary for adjusting the armed forces with NATO. In the purchase specifications requests, the number of needed vehicles changed and the tender was issued for 76 vehicles based on NATO’s estimate that more than 50 percent of the military non-combatant vehicles would be disposed of by 2005.

General off to America 

The SDP’s Boris Sprem became involved in the discussion by quoting a letter which the acting chief inspector of the Defence Ministry, Jozo Milicevic, had sent to President Stjepan Mesic on January 10, 2005, after which he was dismissed.

“What is especially dubious is the purchase of trucks because they are not on the list of priorities of the General Staff and when they do arrive, they will just be kept in storage”.

At the session which lasted for almost two hours, the quarrelling between the ruling and opposition members continued. Andrija Hebrang, Emilija Tomljenovic and Krunoslav Markovinovic from the HDZ claimed that certain documents were unimportant or that the memo should be taken as it is because there is nothing contentious in it, while the members of the opposition reminded them why the parliament in fact established this commission – because instead of 76 trucks, the army purchased 39 trucks through a direct deal with the only bidder, for money that was noted in the tender for the purchase of 76 trucks.

Major Zeljko Keskic suggested that the tender be cancelled so that a direct deal be struck with one of the two best bidders by lowering their prices, by which all 76 vehicles would be purchased. The commission cancelled the tender, concluding that the purchase requests towards the best bidders be reviewed.

No faith in Stazic’s copying 

Today’s meeting ended when it came to analysing the amounts of certain bids for the tender, which the commission’s chairman, Nenad Stazic, had listed on the basis of numbers from memos where the vehicles were grouped by price. HSS’s Stanko Grcic, however, said, he needed time to see for himself that Stazic had copied the numbers down correctly and that the discussion about the issue could not be continued until the next session.

Stazic accepted this and asked for an agreement that General Jozo Milicevic be urgently called in for a hearing, as soon as next week, since the general is leaving for the United States on April 1. Andrija Hebrang opposed this because he believes that the current acting chief inspector of the defence Ministry was not in charge of the purchase process inspection, so the commission can call him in only if it is determined that he had some authority in that area.