Honorarium Recipients Are Outside the Enforcement and All Other Laws

Two colleagues, journalists Tomislav Kukec and Vid Jeraj, have come forward. Each has their own story about enforcement actions.

However, what is common to these stories is the ruthlessness of the enforcement machinery (state and quasi-state administration). Readers may not know, but about one thousand five hundred employees in Fina (which carries out enforcement on bank accounts) mainly work for the Ministry of Finance, specifically for the State Treasury and the Tax Administration of the Ministry of Finance. 
To cover their tracks, the Ministry of Finance uses Fina’s services as a parafiscal institution in enforcement proceedings. Despite regulations stating that commercial banks supposedly carry out payment transactions, it is actually Fina that does this instead of commercial banks. Commercial banks in Croatia are powerless when Fina seizes money from private accounts in banks without court orders.

Consultants Without Ideas Colleague Jeraj writes: ‘I am reaching out to you regarding the Enforcement Act under which my accounts have been blocked, making it impossible for me to receive any financial assistance until further notice.

Namely, I live in the wider center of Zagreb and I am unemployed without any permanent income, and enforcement has been carried out on my current account. I live off occasional honoraria, pay bills mainly based on warnings before enforcement, and recently after a lawsuit, in a household with my brother and no one from my family is helping me. Enforcement with interest has been carried out on the account of the litigation costs of my deceased mother.
None of my recent employers (mvinfo, 15 dana, Croatian Radio) can pay me honoraria:
a) in cash, although until recently I could earn as a musician (saxophone) and DJ, and the law on fiscal cash registers has made this impossible for me, given the sporadic engagements;
b) by postal order,
c) to a foreign bank account.
I would like to ask for your advice, what do you suggest?
I note that I have no concentration problems, I am in excellent physical condition, I speak three foreign languages, however, despite my reputation as a good journalist and editor, I am unemployed and obviously unnecessary in this country,’ emphasized colleague Jeraj.
I also called some consultants asking them what to advise my colleague, but they had no ideas either. The problem, say the consultants, is that the Enforcement Act on monetary assets is being implemented, and it does not provide for a protected account for honorarium recipients.

Creating Homelessness People like colleague Jeraj are outside the law in Croatia. They are exposed to the ruthless state and quasi-state services that have decided to take away from him and his brother the property inherited from their deceased mother (soon they will not even have money to pay bills, and new enforcement will follow until both the colleague and his brother become homeless, not just unemployed).

For the same reason, colleague Tomislav Kukec is in a hopeless situation. Unlike colleague Jeraj, colleague Kukec operates as a registered freelance journalist. He has fallen into tax debt, and Fina (on behalf of the tax authorities) has blocked all his accounts through enforcement. Given that ‘Croatian law does not provide for a protected account for honorarium recipients’, colleague Kukec has had one hundred percent of his paid author fees seized for the entire past year (he has practically survived on daily allowances and family assistance).
Then a warning came from the Tax Administration that he had not paid his current tax obligations and a threat of new enforcement. Meanwhile, it is unclear how the colleague could have settled ‘current tax obligations’ if one hundred percent of his author fees have been seized through enforcement?