Tamara Laptoš as a Prosecutor Worked on the Cases of Bandić and Mamić, and Now Žalac

The arrest of former minister from the ranks of HDZ Gabrijela Žalac and her associates has brought to the forefront the newest body of the European Union – the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO), which many were unaware of until yesterday. The office began operations four months ago on June 1, 2021.

The official website of the newly established Office states that it is an independent EU body responsible for investigations, criminal prosecution, and the filing of charges for criminal offenses that harm the financial interests of the EU, which includes fraud, corruption, money laundering, and cross-border VAT fraud.

At the head of the Office, as the first European Public Prosecutor, sits former Romanian prosecutor Laura Codruțu Kövesi, who has a team of 22 European prosecutors, including Tamara Laptoš, former director of USKOK and former deputy state attorney, who was appointed to this institution by the European Parliament and Council.

Tamara Laptoš has been in the state attorney’s office since 1994, first in the County Attorney’s Office in Čakovec, and since 2007 in USKOK, where she soon began working on major cases in the field of economic crime.

The public became acquainted with Laptoš as the prosecutor who worked on the case of the accused former Deputy Prime Minister Damir Polančec in the Spice affair and as the prosecutor in the Hypo affair against former Prime Minister Ivo Sanader. Due to her good work, she was appointed head of the Prosecutor’s Department in USKOK in April 2011, and a month later, she was named Prosecutor of the Year by the International Association of Prosecutors. Since 2014, when Dinko Cvitan was appointed State Attorney General, she succeeded him as the head of USKOK. After the resignation of State Attorney General Dražen Jelenić, her name was mentioned among the possible candidates for his successor, but even then, her candidacy for a European position stood out. Additionally, during her tenure in USKOK, investigations were initiated against Milan Bandić and Zdravko Mamić, two individuals who had ‘shaken’ Zagreb for years. Both investigations concluded with the filing of charges, and in Mamić’s case, with a final conviction.

When she appeared on HRT’s News in the middle of the year, Laptoš stated that around 20 cases had been detected in Croatia that could fall under the jurisdiction of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, citing the Janaf case as one of the potential cases at that time.

However, it turned out that the first case on the table is that of Gabrijela Žalac, who, with the Software affair, opened a possible Pandora’s box of Croatian malversations and frauds that will be scrutinized by the European Public Prosecutor’s Office in the future.

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