After the Parliament on Friday once again lifted the parliamentary immunity of former head of the Prime Minister’s office Tomislav Saucha, Uskok issued a decision to expand the investigation in the “daily allowance case” in which Saucha is charged with two more cases of abuse of position and authority and forgery of an official document, in which he was assisted or encouraged by the former administrative secretary in the Prime Minister’s office, Sandra Zeljko, whom the prosecution accuses of continuing to withdraw advances for fictitious daily allowances even after Saucha’s departure from Banski Dvori.
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In addition to the illegalities they allegedly committed together while Saucha was the chief of cabinet for Prime Minister Zoran Milanović, Zeljko is also suspected in the expanded investigation of having forged the signatures of later chiefs of cabinet Neven Zelić and Davor Božinović from March 2016 to February 2017, and of having taken and retained advances for daily allowances totaling nearly 350,000 kuna. She allegedly created as many as 65 false travel orders for official trips abroad in the name of several employees of the Croatian Government.
In the expanded investigation, Saucha and Zeljko are also suspected of disbursing advances for another eight fictitious daily allowances amounting to 39,140 kuna. Uskok claims that they “mutually divided and retained that money for their benefit,” as well as the advances for the previously discovered 117 travel orders.
“Discreet Check”
Uskok suspects that Saucha, in addition to previous accusations that he, to the detriment of the state budget, obtained property benefits of over 540,000 kuna and 1,360 euros with the secretary, enabled Sandra Zeljko an undue fee of 4,300 kuna for overtime work. The fee, according to the prosecution’s claims, was paid in the name of another secretary in the government who then transferred the money to the account of Sandra Zeljko’s mother. Since contributions and other payments were made on the fee, the budget, according to Uskok’s claims, was thus damaged by more than 8,600 kuna.
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When information leaked in early March that Zeljko was once again summoned for questioning at Uskok, or that she could become a suspect from a witness, Banski Dvori announced that she had been transferred to another position in the civil service according to her qualifications. The same anonymous source from the Government then stated that after the investigation against Saucha was initiated in early February, Prime Minister Andrej Plenković verbally instructed two of his closest associates to conduct a discreet check to see if illegal daily allowance payments occurred even after Milanović’s Government.
Saucha, on the other hand, claimed that the new findings in the “daily allowance scandal” were the result of his investigation after which he filed a report against an unknown perpetrator for abuse of position and authority and forgery of documents that occurred after his departure from Banski Dvori.
