The Commission for Conflict of interest rejected Gong's report and will not initiate proceedings against Justice Minister Ivan Malenica because he appointed communications expert Mario Aunedi Medek to the working group on the Lobbying Act, whose agency Media Val works for the same ministry.
Given that Minister Malenica has appointed by decree his communications advisor to the working group on the Lobbying Act, we were interested to learn who exactly will protect the public's interests in this process. In addition to the possible conflict of interest, we pointed out the controversial practice of feigned involvement that the Plenković government is prone to.
But the Commission rejected the case, following the reasoning of the Ministry of Justice and Public Administration. They point out that Aunedi Medek was appointed as the head of Croatian Association for Public Relations and not as a co-owner of the Media Val agency. They point out that the members of the working group were appointed on June 25, 2021, and the Ministry's business relationship with the Media Val agency started later - on November 2, 2021.
But what happened after November? Although the Minister had the opportunity to ask Aunedi Medek to resign in November, it was not done. The Ministry informed the Commission that Aunedi Medek stopped participating in the work of the Working Group after he signed a business contract with the Ministry. However, he apparently never formally excluded himself from the working group. The Ministry states that he was present only at one meeting in July.
Moreover, the Ministry claims that Minister Malenica was not involved at all in the selection of the Media Val agency, as this is not his task, but that of his subordinates, the departments within the Ministry. It was a simple public tender procedure, in which the Medek’s agency submitted the best offer, and the contract was signed by the head of Independent Sector for Public Procurement.
"From the documents received, it is clear that in this particular case it is a business relationship between the Ministry and the company Media Val, and not between the obligor Ivan Malenica, the head of the Ministry, and the said company," reads the conclusion signed by Nataša Novaković, which also does not indicate that it is a matter of private interest.
The Commission is really ignoring the fact that Ivan Malenica, who appointed Mario Aunedi to the working group, was at the same time the head of the ministry that carried out the tender in which the company in which the same member of the working group participated was awarded the contract. In their opinion, Malenica would only be in a conflict of interest if he had personally signed the contract with Media Val and personally paid for the services of this agency. Gong believes that the Commission ignores the fact that the Minister is the head of the entity that signed a commercial contract with Media Val and that Medek had to leave the working group as soon as his agency signed a commercial contract with the Ministry in November 2021. It seems controversial to us that the Commission did not even instruct Minister Malenica to instruct Medek to leave the working group after the conclusion of the contract with the Ministry.
