Plenković: I am not interested in what Bernardić is saying

Prime Minister Andrej Plenković reiterated on Friday that the Government will comment on Agrokor on Monday after the release of the complete audit report and emphasized that engaging the auditing firm PriceWaterhouseCoopers has proven to be key and necessary, as their data “will be useful both in the restructuring process and in other legal processes.”

“We clearly stated yesterday, we will wait for the comprehensive report that will be available on Monday and after we thoroughly review it, we will provide a complete comment,” said Plenković in response to a journalist’s question after laying a laurel wreath at the memorial plaque on the Government building on the occasion of the 26th anniversary of the bombing of Banski Dvori.

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“What has proven to be key and necessary is that the extraordinary administration engaged one of the four key global auditing firms to conduct a comprehensive audit and that data will be useful both in the restructuring process and in other legal processes,” he emphasized.

He also stated that he is not interested in the comments of SDP leader Davor Bernardić, after the first part of the audit report was published on Thursday.

The SDP president assessed that either the extraordinary commissioner Ante Ramljak is lying when he says that Agrokor has been operating at a loss for years, or the Minister of Finance Zdravko Marić, who, Bernardić said, claimed on January 26 of this year that everything was fine with Agrokor.

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Plenković first responded to a journalist’s question with a counter-question: “Are you his lawyer?” and then regarding Bernardić’s comment said: “I am not interested in what he says.”

When asked if he believes that Zdravko Marić, who was once employed by Agrokor, knew nothing about the state of the group, the Prime Minister replied that Marić was not involved in financial reporting at Agrokor. “Zdravko Marić is a minister in the Government who, while working at Agrokor, was not involved in the preparation of financial reports; we went through this story six months ago,” he said.

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The Prime Minister also stated that he did not order a review of the electronic communication of commissioner Ramljak, as was done at the request of Deputy Prime Minister Martina Dalić. He believes there is no need for that in Ramljak’s case. “I think there is no need. After what I have seen, I think there is no need,” Plenković said in response to a journalist’s inquiry about whether a review of Ramljak’s mobile phones was ordered.