According to spokesman Igor Stefanec, Moto entered Croatia with a Spanish passport and checked out of Zagreb's Sheraton hotel on March 20, after which he did not report a new address or regulate his status in Croatia, which is why it has to be established if he violated the law on foreigners.
Speaking to Hina, Stefanec was unable to say if the police had already started looking for Moto.
Globus dedicated Moto a cover story in its latest issue saying that the weekly's reporters found him on the business premises of a company in Novi Zagreb. The weekly quoted Moto's hosts as saying that they saved his life by harbouring him from numerous foreign secret services for a month already.
According to Globus, Moto said he escaped from Spain because local authorities wanted to eliminate him because as opposition leader he had become a hurdle to Spain's agreements with Equatorial Guinea President Teodor Obiang about the use of oil in that country. Moto was also quoted as saying that he did not call his family after running away.
Spanish newspapers started writing about his alleged disappearance in Croatia in the middle of this month, followed by a number of articles in Croatian media speculating that he had been killed in a showdown between dealers and traffickers of arms he had come to buy in Croatia in an attempt to stage a new coup.
Moto refuted those speculations in Globus, saying they were lies through which secret services were trying to discredit him.
The Croatian Foreign Ministry today issued a statement saying that Spanish Ambassador Alvaro Sebastian De Eice y Gomez-Aceba had conveyed a verbal note to a state secretary at the ministry, Hido Biscevic, about the Moto case and reports in the Croatian newspapers.
Bisevic said he understood Spain's concern and informed the ambassador they would be informed of the results of the official investigation into the Moto case as soon as possible. Biscevic and the ambassador voiced confidence the case would not affect the development of friendly relations between the two countries.
The press release did not elaborate on the verbal note or the Spanish authorities' concern.
Moto fled Equatorial Guinea to Spain in late 2004, after an unsuccessful coup against President Obiang. Due to his alleged involvement in the coup, he was sentenced in absence to 62 years in jail.