Speaking at the opening of a round table on government transparency, the president said that corruption in Croatia is “breathing its last breaths.”
The discussion was jointly sponsored by the Association of Members of the Croatian Government, the Office of the President and the U.S. Embassy as part of a mutlilateral initiative called the Open Government Partnership, an international intiative conceived by the U.S. State Department “aimed at securing concrete commitments from governments to promote transparency, increase civic participation, fight corruption, and harness new technologies to make government more open, effective, and accountable,” according to its website.
The initiative will be officially launched at a meeting of heads of state on the sidelines of the upcoming UN General Assembly on 20 September.
Croatia has been making gains at fighting corruption in 2011 as part of its requirements for entry into the European Union. The accession treaty is scheduled to be signed after Croatia’s December parliamentary elections. One example of the gains was the indictment of former Prime Minister Ivo Sanader for corruption charges last month.
Croatian Prime Minister Jadranka Kosor, who took over leadership of the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) from Sanader in 2009, has come under fire this week for alleged corruption. On Monday, a deposition from a state investigation into the party’s finances was leaked to the media, alleging the party used millions of Kuna from a “slush fund” in 2005 to finance Kosor’s failed presidential bid.
Kosor said that all of these allegations were politically motivated attacks on her party intended to harm HDZ in the upcoming elections.
She announced Wednesday that access to her possessions and personal finances were open for inspection to all.
“You can take a look at everything I own,” Kosor told journalists at a press conference in her political party’s headquarters. “If you want, we can open everything I have. You can come to my apartment, take an inventory of all my property, my paintings, my carpets, whatever you want, and compare their value with the salaries I have received since 1995, when I entered high politics, and work out whether it is the fruit of my labor or something else.”
