One of the lawyers, Miroslav Pliso, told reporters outside the court building that slander suits were also filed against the Vecernji List chief editor, Ruzica Cigler, the author of the web portal, Matija Babic, a reporter of Slobodna Dalmacija, Davor Krilo, and some other persons.
"We believe that the said media and the responsible persons working for them have committed the crime of slander, as they imputed to somebody serious crimes on the basis of false accusations," the lawyer said, adding that at the moment they were not seeking any compensation and that a decision on possible damages would be made at a later date.
The lawsuit is only one way of proving that in this country one cannot defame others without facts and evidence, the lawyer added.
He went on to say that the requests were also forwarded to the media in question to publish the corrected versions of the relevant stories with apologies to Miomir and Tatjana Zuzul.
The Zuzuls' lawyer said the minister's intention was not to launch a direct attack on the media.
"Simply, this is the only way to prove that what the minister has been blamed for is not true," Pliso said.
He added that the Zuzuls welcomed the move by the Office of the Chief State Prosecutor to initiate a preliminary investigation on its own.
According to the lawyer, Minister Zuzul has already presented the Office of the State Prosecutor with the documentation and the chronology of events regarding the case of his wife's company, another private company and the ailing company called Imotstroj from the town of Imotski.
Last week, the Croatian media and opposition politicians uncovered information saying that Zuzul was in conflict of interest in the Imostroj case. Last Tuesday, the media reported that the minister's wife Tatjana and the owner of the Karin Univerzal Inzenjering company, Ivan Karin, signed a contract in January this year on the sale of shares in her MTS company. Under the contract, Karin was to pay Mrs Zuzul 500,000 kuna (approx. EUR66,700) for a 50-percent share in MTS. In June Karin bought at a price of 6.3 million kuna the bankrupt Imostroj company, whose debt of 6.24 million kuna was written off by the Government in September.
Zuzul then dismissed claims that he was in conflict of interest at the time when the Government made the decision to write off Imostroj's debt. He said the contract between his wife's company and Karin Inzenjering was terminated because it had not been implemented and that no payments had ever been made.
However, last Thursday the media revealed documents showing that there had been five transactions between the two companies, totalling 143,000 kuna, which prompted opposition MPs to demand Zuzul's resignation. Tatjana Zuzul said in an interview with the Saturday edition of the Jutarnji List daily that her husband did not know about transactions that had taken place between her company MTS and Karin Univerzal Inzenjering. Mrs Zuzul said that a bank clerk had mistakenly entered those transactions as payments against an invoice rather than as loans, but added that the most important thing was that the transactions were registered in the company books as loans.