Marko Marinovic came into the limelight recently when he exchanged accusations with the mother of his client Ana Magas, who had been found guilty by a Zadar court of killing her husband and sentenced to eight years in jail. After that a new team of lawyers took over the defence, and the Croatian Bar Association also instigated disciplinary proceedings on suspicion that Marinovic had breached a provision regulating the lawyer-client privilege in his media statements.
Following the scandal, the Jutarnji List daily on Wednesday published an article alleging that in 2002, while she was justice minister, Ingrid Anticevic-Marinovic helped a client of her husband's to win lawsuits in connection with the ownership of a petrol station.
The Globus weekly reported that the police suspected Marko Marinovic of trying to use his wife's political clout when she was the minister to amnesty a client of his, a drug dealer from Split.
"I have never interfered in my husband's work as a lawyer, just as he has never interfered in my political work," Anticevic-Marinovic said in a press release.
She said she was unhappy to see how media reports on her and her husband were detrimental to the SDP, and in order to prevent the exploitation of this situation she decided to resign as SDP Vice President.
Anticevic-Marinovic said she was also aware of the mistake her husband made by commenting in the public on the case of his former client Magas, and that she disapproved of his conduct in that case.
Although his conduct drew understandable criticism, the whole affair also served as a pretext "for ruthless attacks against him, our family and me personally," she said.