Original scientific paper

Insufficient and irrelevant constitutional reasons for the revocation of the Criminal Courts’ judgments in the INA MOL case upon the constitutional complaint of the ex-prime Minister of Croatia

Zlata Đurđević ; Pravni fakultet, Sveučilište u Zagrebu, Zagreb, Hrvatska

Abstract

This paper deals with the Constitutional Court Decision U-III-4149/2014 of July 24 2015 in the INA MOL case that revoked the criminal courts’ convictions of the ex-prime minister of Croatia for accepting a bribe and which sentenced him to imprisonment for 8 years and 6 months. The Constitutional Court found a violation of the principle of legality because of a lack of reasoning for applying the legal notion of "official person" to the prime minister, as well as for wrongly identifying the actions of the president of a political party as the acts of an "official person" and the violation of a fair trial for the use of the assessment that the disputed agreements were against the interest of the Republic of Croatia as an element to determine the individual guilt for accepting a bribe.
The author found that the Constitutional Court committed numerous errors in the application of constitutional law and the interpretation of criminal provisions such as the absence of a constitutional provision which has been violated, the erroneous determination of the relevant part of the provision on the meaning of official person, the lack of knowledge of notorious facts and categories of facts in criminal proceedings, the unconstitutional instructions to complement the elements of crimes with the provisions of international treaties, the absence of grounds for finding a violation of a fair trial due to lack of reasoning in the judgment, the misapplication of the principle of legality in resolving factual issues, the misapplication of the principles and rules of law on evidence and the courts’ authority in producing and assessing evidence and establishing facts, and the unfounded allegations of replacing political and criminal responsibility of the prime minister. The author concludes that the Constitutional Court rendered an arbitrary decision that does not state sufficient and relevant grounds for the established constitutional violations.

Keywords

constitution; constitutional complaint; criminal procedure; Ivo Sanader; INA MOL; right to reasoned decision; arbitrariness

Hrčak ID:

218949

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/218949

Publication date:

12.12.2018.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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