If it remains only on the stance and decision of the State Attorney’s Office, which dismissed criminal charges against a larger number of individuals employed based on forged diplomas and certificates in companies owned by the City of Karlovac, with all due respect to existing legal regulations, a message of encouragement has also been sent to other individuals with such dishonorable approaches to employment and building their own careers.
For the State Attorney’s Office, the statute of limitations has come into effect, which began to run with the very act of presenting forged diplomas during the employment of these individuals, without taking into account the years of significant material benefits gained through the payment of gross salaries for individuals with forged diplomas. In such a culture of forgery and moral defeat, moreover in an environment that Mayor Damir Jelić promotes as distinctly Catholic, unlike the stars with fake diplomas such as the former director of Croatian Radio Karlovac, Marijan Stavljenić, Goran Đurašević from the Zorin Home Theater, Alenka Ban from the Turanj Kindergarten, and a whole series of figures from city companies who have not obtained even high school diplomas through regular means, all members of the HDZ, the only one against whom the criminal charge has not been dismissed is Bernardica Topolnjak-Halapa, then the county president of the HSP. She came to the position of chief of the county office in 2010, so she could not be saved by the statute of limitations. However, the earlier part of her career achieved in the Toplana is likely to also fall under the statute of limitations based on the same forged diploma. Along with salaries, ‘fake experts’ also gained other benefits and opened doors for advancement to managerial positions.
Although all those caught with forgeries were dismissed, if all gross salaries they earned on that basis over the years are summed up, it amounts to millions for which, as the owner of the companies they worked in, the City of Karlovac has actually been harmed.
However, the City of Karlovac will not continue the fight for compensation for such paid money through legal means, as a response from Mayor Jelić’s office to local media stated that ‘the City of Karlovac is not a prosecuting authority, but that is the State Attorney’s Office.’ Jelić’s comment was that ‘the City must not influence the judicial authority, and therefore it is not appropriate to comment on the decisions of the State Attorney’s Office.’ Mayor Jelić, who is also the vice president of the HDZ, emphasizes Karlovac as a ‘city of pleasant living’ during his term, so with this stance towards the peculiar local staffing policy, he seems to be trying to make Karlovac an example of a city of pleasant living for party apparatchiks with forged diplomas.
