Tax ''hunt'' on the future boss of the Public Health

Sanja Ozic is not a name familiar to public but that could soon get changed. It is the name of the member of SDP and the member of the women Forum of SDP and she is nominated for the position of the head of the Institute for the public health. Ozic could replace the present principal Tihomir Majic. That wouldn’t be the problem if the future principal didn’t have a doubtful past. It seems that they don’t care so much about  that in SDP.

Sanja Ozic is having some troubles with the Tax department because she hasn’t been paying her real estate taxes for two years now. We found out from our sources that are very close with the Tax department that Ozic had to pay around 21.000 HRK of taxes according to the resolution from the Tax department. She didn’t pay the fee in the statutory term or even reacted to the warnings from the Tax department. That’s why the Tax department had reacted and started taking the money out of her paycheck. We found out that the Tax department managed to retrieve its money by cutting Ozic’s salary with 4 annuities of 3000 HRK making it in total of 12.000 HRK which left Ozic in debt with the government for another 9000 HRK. Will the Tax department manage to retrieve the rest of the debt remains unclear, considering that Sanja Ozic stopped working in Zagreb’s Health and war veterans’ office? They have no information in the Tax department about her possible new job or employment.

The irony is that the money that the Tax department gets from the real estate taxes, must be given away to the city, which then passes that money further on, and in some point it ends up in the paychecks for the people that are working in the Institute for public health that she should be leading.  

What is also interesting is the murky past of Sanja Ozic when she was working in the City office for Health and war veterans. As it was written in the Feral Tribune (now shut down newspaper) Ozic was the president of Zagreb’s Commission for drug control. Yearly budget for the drug control commission was 6 million HRK. Third of that money (2 million HRK) was given to the company owned by her husband Luksa Pezelj. His company ‘’Promotor Zdravlja’’ was chosen to print brochures, flyers and books associated with drug prevention. They would get the contracts with direct bargaining or vacancies. That means while Ozic was running the Commision for drug control, her husband was getting the contracts for printing the brochures in which the drug prevention was being described.

Sanja Ozic went to law school. Her connection with the Drug prevention commission is the fact that she was working for a short time in the Government’s office for drug prevention during the Ivica Racan’s governing. 

Now, Ozic should become the principal of the Institute for Public Health although her qualifications for that position are not so clear besides the fact that her husband received business contracts in the amount of 2 million HRK.

Back in 2003, our most famous fighter against drug addiction doctor Slavko Sakoman warned us about that sort of things happening and accused the political elite including Sanja Ozic.

- Unfortunately, certain affiliations of people connected into lobbies with the intention of fulfilling their personal goals more easily, often damaging the community, is what happened with the drug prevention program. With the political power of Goran Granic and HSLS, Ante Barbir is pointed to the most exposed position as a Head of the main office for drug control. Sanja Ozic and Luka Prselj are showing up in the name of SDP. Financial interests, employment of your own people and the political marketing have connected that affiliation – said Sakoman in his interview for Slobodna Dalmacija newspaper in 2003.

And now, eight years after that, Ozic should run the Office for Public health of the city of Zagreb.