Zagreb Mayor Probed Again For Corruption

Croatia's anti-organised crime department, USKOK, on Wednesday said that it had issued a new indictment against Zagreb Mayor Milan Bandic for abuse of office.

The first indictment was sent back to USKOK by the Zagreb County Court in February. It wanted additional evidence to be supplied.

The fresh indictment issued on Wednesday accuses Bandic, his colleague from the city administration, Ivica Lovric and Zdenka Palac, director of the "Trznice Zagreb" company, responsible for public markets, and giving illegal preferential treatment to the Zagreb-based NGO "In the Name of the Family".

"In the Name of the Family", a conservative lobby group, succcessfully triggered a referendum on the constitutional definition of marriage in December 2013, which redefined marriage more closely in heterosexual terms as "a union between a man and a woman".

Bandic is accused of getting Lovric and Palac to agree that the NGO should be financially helped beyond the agreed level of sponsorship - which specified only the free use of public space. It is estimated that this cost the Zagreb City and "Trznice Zagreb" budgets about 40,000 euro.

The city administration instead covered the expenses of printing and delivering 700,000 leaflets, 14,500 posters, 120 billboards and the cost of recording of their radio plugs.

Additionally, "Trznice Zagreb" supplied the NGO with 50 stands at markets free of charge.

All this was used during NGO's campaign for the introduction of a new system of preferential voting in Croatia.

The campaign in September and October 2014 ended without success, as the petition failed to reach the legal threshold required to trigger a referendum.

Bandic and other accused face prison sentences ranging between six months and...