UNDER FIRE FROM SPIES Unknown spies researched Ivo Josipovic in great detail: the dossier includes a number of alleged details of his private and business relations A large-scale search has begun for the authors of four secret dossiers on presidential campaigns that were intended to change the course of the presidential election campaigns and influence the election of the third Croatian President. Nacional has learned from top-ranking officials that secret dossiers were made on Ivo Josipovic, Nadan Vidosevic, Andrija Hebrang and Dragan Primorac. At the orders of the Defence and National Security Council (VONS), the SOA security and intelligence agency has undertaken an intensive search for the authors of these dossiers.

There are now doubts among top-ranking state officials that the delivery of these dossiers to the election campaign headquarters of presidential candidates was to have engendered a fear that a part of the intelligence apparatus had gotten involved in the presidential campaign through the informal distribution of compromising information on some of the candidates that had a chance to make it into the second round. This, it is now suspected, was also to have engendered the fear that some presidential candidates enjoyed the dirty and illegal support of the intelligence system.

There are suspicions that placing these dossiers was aimed at a most direct influence on the campaigns individual candidates led, which could have had a significant influence on the outcome of the presidential elections.

For the moment, the SOA has concluded that the authors of these dossiers were certainly once members of the intelligence community, and has informed former President Stipe Mesic that the intelligence community in no way participated in creating these dossiers. During his term in office Mesic received information to the effect that the entire content of these secret dossiers was accessible to their authors from public sources, but the state is for now, it appears, not entirely convinced of this. That is why it is insisting on the additional engagement of the SOA. It has been noted so far, as an indicative circumstance, that there is no dossier on Milan Bandic among the dossiers on the presidential candidates. This is why the first leads have emerged that persons who participated in the Bandic campaign, who previously had contacts with the intelligence system, may have taken part in compiling these dossiers.
The scandal broke in November, just a few weeks ahead of the first round of the presidential elections, at the most sensitive juncture of the campaign, and its key victim was to have been the newly elected President, Ivo Josipovic. An anonymous petition arrived at his campaign headquarters during those days that distressed him most seriously. The petition covers twelve pages of densely typed text, and is written in the manner of a spy dossier. It cites numerous untruths and insinuations, but is formulated as a seriously composed text, that almost immediately leaves upon the reader the impression that it could have been formulated by someone that was closely linked to the intelligence community, or had in the very least been previously linked to it.

Nacional's reporters have read all four dossiers on the presidential candidates. Their content points to the conclusion that a serious effort was invested into compiling them, that several people worked on them, and that the authors of these dossiers could have used some information that was not publicly available. The third paragraph of the dossier on Ivo Josipovic mentions that his marriage was on the rocks a few years ago, because of an alleged affair by Josipovic. It then gives a comprehensive biography of his father, his political engagement, and there are citations of unsubstantiated details according to which some of Josipovic's relatives worked for the former Yugoslav state security in Split and Pula. There is comprehensive writing on his professional development and career, and at the end of this page his assets are first mentioned. The authors list five apartments and their floor area, and state that he inherited three apartments thanks to his wife's family.

Page three of the dossier cites the alleged scandals in which Josipovic was embroiled. His alleged suspicious activities in the Posmrtna pripomoc funeral services association, and there is a detailed description his alleged business ties with Marko Vojkovic, who was up to recently the majority stakeholder of the Adriatica.net tourist agency, in the earlier phase of his business career.

The core of the Josipovic dossier provides a detailed description of the people that participated in his presidential campaign. A few sentences are given on each - where they come from, with whom they are close and what kind of help they can provide to Josipovic, above all in relations with the press. The following two pages make up the second part of the Josipovic dossier, which indicates that it was worked on several ties and updated. In this part it cites a number of details on the alleged business collaboration between Josipovic and Vojkovic, and in particular describes Josipovic's dealings in some allegedly debatable engagements in the protection of royalty rights (ZAMP) with the Croatian Composers' Association. This part cites the name of a woman that it is claimed was for a time Josipovic's lover, which allegedly also influenced some business decisions made by Josipovic. The third part of the Josipovic dossier describes precisely with what journalists Josipovic is on good terms with, and which people in his campaign headquarters allegedly "cover" individual print and electronic media. It insinuates, for example, that publisher EPH should charge payment for a part of the Josipovic advertising campaign from Adriatica.net, thanks precisely to the complex web of business connections that Josipovic allegedly developed with Marko Vojkovic for years.

Josipovic was not so much distressed by the content of this dossier as he was by the knowledge that a significant amount of effort was invested in compiling it on the part of people who were surely in some way professionally linked to the intelligence community, or were perhaps still its members. He was further distressed by rumours that the petition had not been delivered to his campaign headquarters alone, but also allegedly to the editorial offices of some newspapers.

DRAGAN PRIMORAC is covered on three pages of the dossier that treat his character and origins Josipovic rightly suspected that intelligence service agents may have participated in compiling the document. If this were true, one could speak of a first-rate political scandal, in which a part of the intelligence community would have participated in a dirty campaign to discredit the presidential candidates who were not to the liking of a part of the intelligence community. Josipovic decided to eliminate these serious doubts in a legitimate and legal way. He informed then President Stipe Mesic of his suspicions. Josipovic asked Mesic to try and check out if it was possible that a part of the intelligence community was getting involved in the election campaign in this fashion. He probably submitted the dossier in question to Mesic right away, and Mesic immediately requested of the SOA that they closely investigate the entire case. The SOA soon afterwards began sending its information, from the content of which it becomes apparent that the para-intelligence milieu was involved in the election campaign.
The SOA carried out a detailed analysis of the petition and gave its opinion of it after a time. The SOA concluded that no one from the intelligence community took part in compiling the petition, but that it had been compiled by someone who could be a former member of the intelligence system. That is why claims arose that the petition was put together by the intelligence underworld.

The SOA is, however, inclined to point out that the contents of the dossier were in their entirety collected from publicly available sources. What is more, some people close to the SOA even go so far as to claim that most of the content was collected from Internet portals, blogs and above all in sections that anonymously comment articles on the presidential campaign. This is most likely only partially true, and it should be pointed out in particular that the fallacious and hard to corroborate information in the dossier has been very dexterously included in the content, which means that they were compiled by people who might previously have compiled dossiers for people of interest to security services.

There was an official discussion on the matter in late November at a session of the Defence and National Security Council (VONS). Present at the November 30th session were President Stipe Mesic, Prime Minister Jadranka Kosor, Justice Minister Ivan Simonovic, Defence Minister Branko Vukelic, Interior Minister Tomislav Karamarko, SOA director Josip Buljevic, the VSOA military security and intelligence agency director Darko Grdic, the President's advisor on national security Sasa Perkovic, while Chief State Attorney Mladen Bajic and Police General Director Oliver Grbic were allegedly on hand precisely because of the discovery of the suspect dossiers.

In the conclusions of the VONS session under agenda point 4, on sundry matters, a written conclusion is cited that the SOA undertook to continue the intensive search for the authors of the controversial dossiers, and that it would launch a rigorous campaign against the members of the so-called "para-intelligence" system, i.e. the intelligence underworld. Almost nothing was known of these dramatic events right up to last week. That was when President Ivo Josipovic told the Globus weekly in an interview that he would work to break the para-intelligence system. Josipovic said that, "The public needs to be shown who and what these people, illegally involved in collecting information on people, and concocting and placing fraudulent information on other people, are. This is also often done in collusion with the criminal milieu. I will not personally be involved in investigations about them, but I will ask the State Attorney's Office to carry out an investigation in the area in which these dirty dealings cross over into the sphere of criminal activity."

In the second part of the interview Josipovic said that the information and timely warning provided by Sasa Perkovic helped him in deflecting the attacks of the para-intelligence underworld directed against his person, the members of his family and his team. This was followed by insinuations that Perkovic had thereby deserved to stay on at the post of national security advisor during the Josipovic term in office, and there were erroneous claims that Perkovic had violated the law in his actions and that Josipovic had used the services of the intelligence community during the presidential elections. Josipovic could have, without a doubt, become the greatest victim of the presidential elections. Now the situation has changed entirely, in large part due to the fact that Josipovic reacted properly and sought the help of the state apparatus via the proper channels to eliminate suspicions as to whether a part of the intelligence community was taking part in a dirty election campaign. It is possible that there has been an attempt to introduce a sophism because Josipovic last week announced a tough campaign against the para-intelligence community.

The dossiers in question may have after all to some extent influenced the outcome of the presidential elections. The dossier on Nadan Vidosevic is also very comprehensive. It covers eleven pages and deals with his private and marital problems, the alleged scandals he was involved in, describing how he came into his assets, why he transferred a large part of his property to his mother and the like. It is possible that Vidosevic was inactive in the last week of the campaign as a result of this dossier. The dossiers made about Andrija Hebrang and Dragan Primorac are significantly shorter, each covering three pages. Hebrang's dossier is for the most part biographical and very superficially cites the disproportion between his personal wealth and his earnings, and his participation in some scandals.

ANDRIJA HEBRANG The HDZ presidential candidate was worth only three pages of the dossier that discuss the disproportion of his personal wealth and earnings, and some scandals The authors of the dossiers deal with Primorac's origins, his character and some alleged small-time scandals he was embroiled in.

All four of the candidates whose dossiers appeared ahead of the first round of the presidential elections were to have been victims of the para-intelligence system, which evidently picked a side and worked in someone's interest. The Defence and National Security Council will continue to investigate for whom these dossiers were compiled, who drafted them, from what sources, and who paid for it all. The fact that, in spite of its all, Ivo Josipovic has become the President is the best guarantee that the investigation will not be a perfunctory one quickly shut down.