One of the most high-profile cases involves Zagreb’s mayor of the past two decades, Milan Bandic.

Bandic and 10 co-defendants [Slobodan Ljubicic, Petar Pripuz, Ivan Tolic, Miljenko Benko, Koraljka Rozankovic Uremovic, Ines Bralic, Miro Laco, Zdenko Antunovic, Branko Mihaljevic and Vidoje Bulum] are standing trial on charges of corruption, abuse of office and trading in influence stemming from the alleged embezzlement at least three million euros. They all deny the charges.

Croatia’s anti-graft body, USKOK, first issued the indictment in December 2015, but some of the charges were later revised and the proceedings suspended. The trial formally restarted after charges of misuse of the waste management service were appended to the indictment last October.

Bandic “is not only in power despite a dozen indictments, but his people are significant backers of the majority in parliament,” Ivkovic Novokmet said, referring to the support Bandic’s Party of Work and Solidarity for the HDZ-led ruling majority in the Croatian parliament. In return, HDZ helps keep Bandic in power in the city assembly.

Marin Mrcela, president of the Council of Europe’s Group of States against Corruption, GRECO, and Vice President of Croatia’s Supreme Court, said the judiciary had a part to play in the fight against corruption in any country, “but by no means the only, or even the most important, part”.

“For more than 20 years, GRECO has been reiterating in its reports that the prevention of corruption is the key to fighting corruption, that education and change are needed, as well as control mechanisms in society, which, with the transparency of public services and policies, will prevent corrupt behaviour,” Mrcela said.

“Criminal proceedings against corruption mean that the prevention of corruption has not worked, and the criminal law is the ‘last resort’ of society in the fight against corruption.”

With regards criticism over the slow pace of court proceedings, Mrcela said the cases that made the headlines were not typical. “These are roughly 15 complex and extensive court cases,” he told BIRN, “most of them have thousands of pages.”

He blamed the negative perception of the judiciary on “generalisation, trivialisation and misunderstanding of the complexities of criminal corruption cases.”

Statistics, he said, show the average length of court cases had been cut over the last five years.

Croatian courts “are somewhere in the middle when looking at all courts in Europe,” Mrcela said. But, he added, “there is certainly room for progress,” particularly in terms of how long cases take.

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