Croatian PM sacks health minister accused of corruption

Prosecutors accuse suspects of ‘accepting and giving bribes, abuse of position and authority and money laundering’.

Croatia’s prime minister has fired Health Minister Vili Beros following his arrest on suspicion of corruption as part of a European Union investigation.

“This morning, former Minister Vili Beros and two other individuals were arrested as part of an operation conducted” by anticorruption officials, Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic told a news conference on Friday.

“As prime minister, I am personally appalled by the idea that anyone in the healthcare system would use their position either for personal enrichment or to favour someone else within the healthcare system,” Plenkovic said.

The European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) in the capital, Zagreb, said it had launched an investigation into eight people, including Beros and the directors of two hospitals.

The EU’s independent public prosecution office accused the suspects, and two companies, of “accepting and giving bribes, abuse of position and authority and money laundering”, it said in a statement.

“Mr Beros completely denies any criminal responsibility,” his lawyer Laura Vakovic told journalists.

Plenkovic, who was re-elected in April, said, “We as a government have not and will not protect anyone from criminal prosecution if they are suspected of committing criminal acts, regardless of who that may be or which duty they have.”

Between June 2022 and November 2024, five of the suspects tried to “secure undue financial gains” in a scheme involving the sale of medical robotic devices for several hospitals in Croatia, prosecutors said.

The suspects also offered bribes to manipulate the public procurement process, according to the EPPO.

This was attempted on at least four occasions but did not work in the case of an EU-funded project in the coastal town of Split, where their bribe was refused, the prosecutors said.

In the other three instances in various hospitals in Zagreb, “there are allegations that the minister of health, in exchange for a bribe received, issued approvals for the purchase of operating microscopes at unreasonably inflated prices, and provided funds for public procurement.”

The price was “unjustifiably increased by [$654,000] to the detriment of the Croatian national budget,” the prosecutors added.

Croatia’s Office for the Suppression of Corruption and Organised Crime (USKOK) confirmed the arrests without identifying the suspects.

Beros was appointed to the post after his predecessor, Milan Kujundzic, was sacked in January 2020 over his links to a case involving undeclared assets.

Since taking power in 2016, several ministers from the prime minister’s conservative Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) party have stepped down amid corruption allegations.

Croatia has had severe problems with systemic and political corruption. It is generally ranked by international anticorruption groups as one of the most corrupt states among the 27 EU member countries.

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Al Jazeera and news agencies