Whistleblowing Board Supervising Croatian TV Faces Axe

The Croatian parliament's committee on information, computerisation and the media on Thursday called for the removal of the supervisory board of the public broadcaster Croatian Radio Television, HRT, after the board last week again warned of possible corruption inside the broadcaster.

With seven votes "for" and four "against", MPs of the ruling Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ and their junior coalition partners voted to axe the board before its term ends. Parliament will have to confirm the decision by the majority of all 151 MPs.

The supervisory board published a report on its monitoring of the legality of HRT's activities in 2016, in which it noted several irregularities.

Citing "cases that may have been the result of possible corrupt actions and illegal activities by individual persons", the board forwarded reports on HRT's procurement of audio-visual works from independent producers, on out-of-court settlements and on the effectiveness of its public procurements to the state attorney's office .

The board warned MPs last week that the procurement of audio-visual works from independent producers was "non-transparent", without any clear criteria for assessing the value of projects.

Contracts with independent producers had been signed even before the public tenders for them had ended, it said.

The board urged the Culture Ministry to undertake administrative controls over HRT.

Before the vote in the committee was taken on Thursday, the president of the committee, former HDZ Culture Minister, Jasen Mesic, said MPs had no desire to protect "any criminal activities" that allegedly took place in HRT.

Mesic said they decided to remove the board following multiple warnings from the commercial and administrative court that...