The president reiterated that the drug scandal took place after the husband of an employee of the Croatian consulate was caught buying drugs worth 17 dollars. Mesic said that the fact was that the then Counter-Intelligence Agency (POA) failed to run a check-up on that person, stressing this was the first mistake.
If the agency ran a check-up on the Croatian Foreign Ministry employee, it also should have ran a check-up on her husband who was scheduled to travel with her, Mesic told reporters at the presentation of a plan for prevention of drug abuse, held in his office,
The second mistake happened after the Consul General failed to notify the competent bodies including the ambassador and the minister, Mesic said. He stressed that the fact that there was no written record about the incidents was the biggest mistake.
Now we have a testimony that is very difficult to be verified - because there are no written but only verbal notifications, Mesic said adding that it is important to make a point from this, namely that if an issue is contentious in embassies or consulates there should be a written record about it so that responsibility could later be established.
Asked if the scandal caused harm to the position of the Foreign Minister Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic, Mesic said the case itself cause no harm to her position, because she did not learn about it on time which is why she was not able to react.
"If you don't know anything about a certain issue, you cannot react," the president said.