Irresponsible in Public Administration Will Reign Until They Are Punished

I will provide two examples that suggest that employees in public service and high officials feel no responsibility for the damage they cause. This week, an entrepreneur who is close to a current minister told me about it.

Due to her, I cannot say which minister it is, but the point is that he once complained to her that he had returned a case to an official for revision fourteen times. The entrepreneur was astonished; she says she would return the case for revision twice, and for the third time, he would be fired. But the minister, she says, just shrugged his shoulders.

Nine Years of Delays

The second example is the case of Trogir entrepreneur Mirko Rapić. He is an entrepreneur who this year topped the Tax Administration’s shame list with a debt of almost 42 million kuna. They kept him in uncertainty for nine years, and then finally this week, writes Slobodna Dalmacija, the Independent Sector for Second Instance Decisions of the Ministry of Finance issued a decision that the man is not guilty, that the first-instance decision of the Tax Administration is null and void, and that the procedure must be conducted again.
For the record, Rapić was a craftsman who worked for shipyards. After his income exceeded a certain amount, he had to register a company, so he established R. L. E. t. p. (individual trader). Instead of the tax officials recording the liabilities to the company, they continued to record them against him as a natural person, i.e., the owner of the craft.

Although he warned them, and much was written about it, mostly by Slobodna Dalmacija, the tax officials were unresponsive, and the debt of the natural person, the owner of the craft Rapić, grew; at the same time, he was keeping the books for his company. In the end, the financial police fined him for maintaining double bookkeeping. His company was blocked, and the debt grew to almost 42 million kuna this year.

The High Administrative Court ruled this year that the Tax Administration acted illegally, but interestingly, even after that, the tax officials did not react, and everything was attempted to be covered up. Only with the decision of the second-instance body of the Ministry of Finance this week was this farce interrupted. Let us recall the words of the then already former Minister of Finance Slavko Linić, who commented on the aforementioned ruling of the High Administrative Court for the media. He stated at the time: ‘If this happened, the state not only needs to return the money but also pay for the damage caused by the cessation of activities.’

Easiest to Forget

Of course, the money collected through the blockade should be returned, along with default interest. Rapić should also be compensated for the damage caused by the inactivity of the company due to the blockade. There is even talk of around two hundred million kuna in damages, which we will not delve into, but former Minister Linić, in addition to the return of money and payment of damages, forgot a third thing – the question of accountability of those who caused this and their reimbursement of costs due to the damage to the state budget.

This is precisely the problem: it is easiest, if there is no way out, to pay the person what is theirs and forget all about it. The Tax Administration has all the data to clarify this matter. It is known who was Rapić’s official, who made the decision, and it can be easily determined based on his complaints to whom he addressed to resolve his problem. Just as the esteemed minister knows to whom he returned the case for revision fourteen times.
As long as we do not start punishing those who cause damage, including ministers who are also responsible for not reacting, there will continue to be new Rapićs.