County prefects in the Asset Detector
Mašenjka Bačić, Ante Pavić
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In its new investigative project, Oštro journalists verified assets declarations and searched for undeclared property of Croatian county prefects and the mayor of Zagreb. They have uncovered undeclared and incorrectly declared property
Illustration: Istvan David
An auxiliary building with a wellness facility, part of a luxury villa, forests, buildings, plots of arable land and a sole proprietorship entity: this is just a partial list of the undeclared property that Oštro discovered, while verifying the asset declaration of Croatian county prefects. In certain cases, the prefects responded by saying that it had been a mistake while others did not reply.
These are the results of Oštro's newest project, the Asset Detector, in which journalists verified assets declarations of officials submitted to the Commission for the Resolution of Conflicts of Interest and looked for possible undeclared assets.
In the first phase of the project, Oštro investigated the assets of county prefects and the mayor of Zagreb. By using investigative and data journalism methods, Oštro verified 323 properties and identified 22 unreported, 21 misreported, and 1 unreported sole proprietorship, as well as an incorrectly registered business share. Out of the 21, eight failed to report a property, and eleven made a mistake while registering it.
After Oštro warned of errors when registering assets declarations, three of the prefects corrected them. Of all the declared properties, Oštro was unable to identify 44.
Undeclared assets
“After Oštro warned of errors when registering assets declarations, three of the prefects corrected them.”
Boris Miletić, Istrian County Prefect, failed to report to the Commission for the Resolution of Conflicts of Interest the auxiliary building next to his wife’s Villa Martin in the village of Snašići in Istria, which was until recently rented out by the company of the wife’s father. The villa is a five-star tourist accommodation with a swimming pool, surrounded by a forest. In the unregistered building, there is a sauna and a gym.
In a reply to Oštro, Miletić explained that he overlooked this part of his wife's property, and said she inherited it from her mother in 2008. In his asset declaration, the Istrian villa with a swimming pool is valued at approximately 700,000 euros.
According to a land registry excerpt, the above-mentioned villa in Snašići was sold to foreign nationals in March this year. However, the auxiliary building is still registered as the property of Miletić's wife.
In his explanation to Oštro, Miletić stated that the house was sold, but that not all transactions related to the deal were fully implemented and therefore he could not enter the exact value of the income from the sale in his assets declarations .
He further added: “My family could not independently finance this facility, hence, a legal entity participated in the construction of the facility and managed it. Therefore, it is necessary to revalue a part of these funds and pay the share to the legal entity in question”. He concluded that it is obligatory to register this sale in the assets declaration by the end of the current year.
In addition to the auxiliary building, Miletić also forgot to report in his assets declaration from the beginning of 2023 a forest the size of about 10,000 square meters, which is also located in Snašići. In Miletić's 2022 assets declaration that forest was duly reported.
He thanked Oštro by phone for pointing out the omission and attached a copy of the new assets declaration. The Commission published the new assets declaration on its website before this story was published. Miletić then declared the auxiliary building next to the villa under the category “other real estate”, and added a forest in Snašići.
The Osijek-Baranja County Prefect Ivan Anušić failed to register eight properties, mostly arable plots in the village of Musić in the total size of more than five hectares, all of which are registered to his wife. By phone, Anušić's office explained that this was done in error and promised to send a response, but Oštro has not received any before the publication of the Asset Detector.
Nikola Dobroslavić, the Dubrovnik-Neretva County Prefect, did not declare in his assets declaration a house in Slano that came into his possession in 2017, after a court verdict. He also didn’t declare the co-ownership of a building in the same location, for which it was not clear from Google Earth footage what exactly it is. Dobroslavić did not respond to Oštro’s queries.
Damir Dekanić, the prefect of Vukovar-Srijem County, was not precise in filling out assets declaration either. He duly reported an arable land plot in Cerna near Županja, but while examining satellite imagery Oštro discovered an object looking like a house with a roof had been built there which was not registered in the land registry.
The County prefecture replied to Oštro that no building permits were issued for the plot on which the facility stands, adding that they are not authorized for inspection work. Dekanić did not respond to Oštro’s inquiry about this property.*
The Lika-Senj County Prefect, Ernest Petry, failed to declare the 7,114-square-meter field in Bilaj, owned by his wife. Petry confirmed to Oštro that his wife co-owns parts of the Bilaj real estate that she received by inheritance, but explained that land registry data does not correspond to the actual situation, something that according to him is often the case in Lika.
"After my wife will have obtained all the necessary excerpts from the land registry, for the areas where she is registered as a co-owner, it goes without saying that – if something is incorrect or omitted, I will include it in my declaration”, Petry announced.
In addition, Oštro has also found a house and an arable land plot in Kninsko polje, co-owned by the Šibenik-Knin county prefect Marko Jelić and 10 other people. He declared neither the house nor the land plot in his asset declaration. Jelić explained that he inherited the two units from his father, adding that the actual situation often differs from the land registry. He stated that when the situation in the land registry is put in order, he will amend the data in his assets declaration.
In addition to real estate, Oštro discovered an undeclared sole proprietorship of Jelić's wife. Jelić reported that his wife enjoys income from the mentioned proprietorship but she is not the owner. He said he would check with the Committee whether the craft trade should be registered under the ownership category.
The Committee explained to Oštro that Jelić should have registered his wife's ownership of the craft trade. When we notified him of the Committee’s reply, he didn’t respond again.
In January this year, the prefect of Primorje-Gorski Kotar County Zlatko Komadina declared that his wife owns 64% shares of the company Rio Rijeka worth 51.76 euro per share, which translates into a 0.05 percent ownership. After Oštro's inquiries about these shares, Komadina amended the data about the shares this May, as Rio Rijeka is a limited liability company.
Villa Martin at Snašići. Source: Google Earth
Misreported real estate
Oštro also found several properties that were misreported.
The Karlovac County Prefect, Martina Furdek-Hajdin, thus did not note an undefined facility in Vrbovsko, on land she owns together with her family in her assets declaration that there is. The facility is not registered in the land registry – Oštro found it with Google Earth. Furdek Hajdin did not respond to Oštro’s inquiries.
The investigation also revealed that the prefect of Požega-Slavonia County, Antonija Jozić, did not report a facility next to the house that she did report to the Committee. The non-reported facility is located in the municipality of Gradac, near Požega. She explained that it was an auxiliary building, adding that the administrative procedure for its legalization had been started.
“Given that the decree on the current condition has recently been issued, I expect that the facility will be registered in the following two months,” Jozić replied.
The Prefect of the Sisak-Moslavina County, Ivan Celjak, failed to declare a garden and a courtyard next to the house in Novi Sisak that he did report. In an interview with Oštro, Celjak said that he will list the above-mentioned properties on the assets declaration which he did and published the amended assets declarations on May 11.
Oštro revealed also that Koprivnica-Križevci County Prefect, Darko Koren, did not list his ownership of two arable plots of land on the assets declaration. Koren told Oštro: “The above-mentioned land is not in fact my property. My late father sold it 60 years ago, but the new owner did not register it to themselves: according to the probate proceedings, the land is technically owned by me.”
The Zagreb County Prefect, Stjepan Kožić, is the absolute winner in terms of the number of properties he owns among prefects. As a matter of fact, Kožić owns so many property units that not all of them could be listed on the assets declaration to the extent that he had to list the majority in the declaration’s footnote. In total, Kožić owns 68 plots, mostly agricultural land received by inheritance.
However, he too failed to report a building on one of those plots, which he co-owns with another person. He reported the said facility as a 806 square meter forest in the village of Blaškovac. But Oštro found that the property was described in the land registry as a “garden, attached to a building”, while a review of the cadastral map and Google Earth footage showed that there was a larger facility there.
The relevant court in Sesvete told Oštro that the cadaster is responsible for registration but we have not received a reply from the district cadaster..
Kožić told Oštro that certain data in the land registry and the cadastre are not actually correct because, according to him, in the past real estate swaps, purchases or donations were not always registered in official documents.“I did not start the proceedings to resolve property and legal issues, as the cost of the proceedings in most cases exceeds the value of the real estate I inherited from my parents”, Kožić explained.
Property ownership in numbers
With 46 properties, the second on the list of prefects with the most real-estate is the Zadar County Prefect Božidar Longin. He bought most of the land he owns in the village of Duboki Dol, under the mountain of Velebit, totalling at almost seven hectares.
The difference between the two prefects is that Kožić received almost all the real estate through inheritance, while Longin mostly purchased it. He has acquired as many as 43 properties, most of all current prefects, either by taking out a loan or with his own income.
Although Kožić and Longin are champions in owning various properties, the prefect that owns the most apartments and houses is the Lika-Senj county prefect, Ernest Petry.
Petry reported as many as seven apartments and houses to the Commission for the Resolution of Conflicts of Interest : a house and an apartment in Gospić, three houses in Karlobag, one of 40 square meters and two of more than 30 square meters. He is also the owner of an apartment in Zagreb and a house in Bilaj, as well as a business space in Gospić, where he also owns three adjacent buildable plots.
Kožić ranks second among the prefects when it comes to purchasing real estate – he has acquired a total of 16 of properties: either by taking out a loan or with his own income. In addition to the afore-mentioned houses and apartments, Kožić has also purchased fields. He reported three loans worth a total of 264,000 euros to the Committee.
However, among all the prefects, Kožić is not the most indebted to banks. Antonija Jozić, from the Požega-Slavonia county, has two ongoing agreements with various banks. She is the guarantor for two loans that together amount to 88,000 euro, and she is also paying back two loans of 57,000 euro each, as well as the lease for a car worth almost 12,500 euro.
In absolute terms, the most indebted prefect is Marko Jelić, who governs the Šibenik-Knin County. He and his wife have taken out several loans and have a bank guarantee worth a total of 140,800 euros.
On the other hand, prefects are not as good at saving money, at least judging by the data in asset declarations.
The most successful among them is Nikola Dobroslavić, who reported savings for 292,000 euros. That is far more than Zlatko Komadina, who reported 65,000 euros. The next runner up is Martina Furdek Hajdin with 50,000 euros saved, more than half of which is for the children.
Dobroslavić also holds 8.63 per cent of the total number of shares in a company called Hotel Osmine, and his share is worth 151,000 euro. According to the State Treasury data, the company received 134,730 euros from the State budget between 2020 and 2022 which originated in the European Regional Development Fund.
Jelić, Kožić, Marušić, Anušić, Dekanić and Posavec do not have any savings.
All the prefects, except the head of the Zadar county, reported their property on time. Longin submitted his assets declaration a month and a half after the legal deadline. He did not explain to Oštro why he did not declare his assets on time.
The Committee did initiate proceedings against him in June 2022 for discrepancies in his asset declaration. The Committee told Oštro that the final decision will be made during one of the following sessions.
Oštro will continue to monitor and investigate officials' assets and update Asset Detector data. The next publication is scheduled in autumn.
*AMENDMENT, May 26, 2023: In the previous version of the story, we incorrectly reported that the prefect of the Vukovar-Srijem County, Damir Dekanić, had not responded to Oštro’s inquiries. On May 9, 2023, Damir Dekanić did send a reply to our journalist Ante Pavić, who missed it. We state his answer below: "At the cadastral unit. no. 2608/78 of the cadastral municipality Cerna, there is a container that had been placed on detached concrete blocks by a crane and is not solidly connected to the ground which means that it is not considered a built structure. Next to the container there is a garden gazebo with a firebox, open on three sides while on one side it is closed with a prefabricated and thus temporary wooden structure. Accordingly, prescribed by the Construction Act and the Ordinance on simple and various buildings and works for afore-mentioned buildings, it is not necessary to prepare a fully fledged project nor obtain a building permit”. We apologize to the prefect Damir Dekanić and our readers for the mistake.