Russian Tsar Peter the Great introduced the ‘soul tax’ at the beginning of the 18th century, which had to be paid by every person, regardless of their religious affiliation. Domagoj Švegar, the leader of the Civic Initiative ‘Stop Corruption’, believes that what the City Heating Plant is doing to citizens who no longer want its heating services is, at the very least, on par with the absurdity of Peter the Great’s tax.
This is supported by the example of Marijan Fudurić, who ended up at the Clinic for Psychological Medicine at KBC Zagreb for four weeks after an enforcement attack by the City Heating Plant.
Fudurić, who was the director of the city Heating Plant in 2007, which went bankrupt and was renamed to the new entity City Heating Plant, physically separated from the common heating system of the Heating Plant and installed his own electric heating system. This was in May, when bankruptcy was opened against the Heating Plant with debts of nearly 80 million kuna, and the new entity City Heating Plant did not even exist yet. He informed both the old Heating Plant and the later established City Heating Plant in writing about everything that had been done. However, despite the physical impossibility of taking heat from its system and Fudurić’s clearly expressed stance that he no longer wants any contractual relationship with the bankrupt Heating Plant, and that he has no contract with the newly established City Heating Plant, the City Heating Plant began issuing heating bills to Fudurić at the start of the heating season. Fudurić’s complaints were rejected by the City Heating Plant, citing Article 23 of the Law on the Production, Distribution, and Supply of Thermal Energy, with the interpretation that he did not obtain consent for separation from the heating system from all other approximately 50 owners of apartments and users of business premises on the common energy consumption meter. Moreover, the City Heating Plant threatened Fudurić with enforcement along with further billings, after which he ended up in psychiatry due to stress. Fudurić was, in fact, the director of the Heating Plant in 2007, but was dismissed by the city authorities after only three months because he began, as he himself states, to uncover numerous criminal activities in the operations of the Heating Plant.
