May 18 (SeeNews) - Croatia's prime minister Andrej Plenkovic has called on the subcontracted consultants in the restructuring of troubled concern Agrokor to return 'excessive' fees they were allegedly paid in order to remove any suspicion of profiteering.
The appointment of a crisis management team in Agrokor and the subsequent hiring of consultants is not contentious but that the selection of subcontractors is in fact problematic, Plenkovic said in a statement on Thursday.
"I call on all those concerned, and these are all people with a business and human integrity, to make a gesture and to return to the company or AlixPartners everything they consider excessive, except for the expenses and fees paid to Ramljak, in order to remove once and for all any sort of suspicion of profiteering, which has nothing to do with me," Plenkovic said, adding that he did not know who the subcontractors were or how much they were paid.
Agrokor hired AlixPartners under a call for restructuring consultants in April last year, at the time that Ante Ramljak was crisis administrator of Agrokor. Ramljak resigned in February over an alleged conflict of interest related to subcontracting of advisors.
Earlier this week, Croatia's economy minister and deputy prime minister, Martina Dalic, also resigned from both positions in the government after leaked correspondence related to Agrokor raised concerns she may have also acted in conflict of interest.
Prior to her resignation, emails leaked by news portal Index.hr showed that some of the experts whom Dalic had contacted prior to the adoption of a law that put the state in charge of the indebted food-to-retail concern were later hired as advisors in its restructuring.
Suspicion later arose that Plenkovic had been aware of the entire situation but he denied to have been involved in the email correspondence.
On Thursday, Plenkovic said he has nothing to hide and called on the authorities to shed light on all details concerning Agrokor. He explained that had the government not adopted the law on crisis management of companies of vital importance to the country's economy, popularly known as Lex Agrokor, Croatia would have faced an economic crisis and 60,000 people would have lost their jobs throughout the region.
"This law has achieved its goal, and if there are some details that were not good in the process, they should be clarified and resolved," Plenkovic said, and added that had the law been problematic, it would not have been supported by the country's top court.
On April 6 last year, Croatia's parliament passed the special legislation on crisis management of companies of systemic importance to shield the country's economy from big corporate bankrupcies. Earlier this month, the Constitutional Court said that Lex Agrokor complies with the constitution.