On Monday morning, the police began arresting former leaders of Agrokor who managed the company before it was taken over by a temporary administration, and according to data from the State Attorney’s Office, “investigations and searches” are ongoing for 15 individuals.
So far, according to available data, Ivan Crnjac, Piruška Canjuga, Ljerka Puljić, and Tomislav Lučić have been arrested. All of them were members of the management or supervisory board of the troubled conglomerate, which had seven members in its management before the arrival of the extraordinary government commissioner Ante Ramljak.
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At the top was Ivica Todorić as president, while his older son Ante was vice president. Ante Todorić assumed this position in early 2016, and his previous role as a member of the management for retail was taken over by Darko Knez, but only for six months.
Other members of Agrokor’s management held the title of executive vice presidents within the company.
According to media reports, the executive vice president for finance, strategy, and capital markets, Ivan Crnjac, had the most responsible role in the business of writing reports. Crnjac has been with Agrokor since 2005 as the executive director for strategy, and in 2008 he took on the role of executive vice president for strategy, mergers, and acquisitions and entered the management board of the conglomerate.
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Ljerka Puljić was a long-time senior executive vice president of Agrokor and was known for years as Todorić’s right hand. She joined Agrokor from Ledo in the first half of the 1990s and gradually became the most powerful person in the conglomerate. Since 2015, she has been a member of Agrokor’s Supervisory Board. She has been elected the most powerful woman in Croatian business for ten consecutive years according to the list of the 300 most powerful women by Lider weekly.
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Damir Kuštrak, a former member of Agrokor’s management and a member of the Supervisory Board of Mercator, entered Ivica Todorić’s conglomerate in 1994 when he was appointed senior executive vice president for operations and marketing at Agrokor. He held that position until 2000 when he went to the government of Ivica Račan as deputy minister of finance. Since 2004, he has been the president of the management board of Medika, and in 2008 he returned to Agrokor where he took on the role of executive vice president for export markets. Kuštrak was also the president of the Croatian Employers’ Association (HUP).
