INA OIL COMPANY COMMENTS ON MEDIA HEADLINES ABOUT IRREGULARITIES

ZAGREB, March 10 (Hina) - Following the first announcement by the president of the INA Supervisory Board about possible irregularities surrounding the selection of bidders for the upgrading of the Rijeka and Sisak refineries, the President of INA's Management, Tomislav Dragicevic, asked of Interior Minister Sime Lucin to investigate the validity of the process and selection of the best bid for that task, INA said in a press release Monday. #L# The press release is INA's reaction to an article published in Sunday's issue of the Jutarnji list daily in which Deputy Prime Minister Slavko Linic accused the director of INA for accepting a bribe in relation to the selection of the best offer to upgrade INA's refineries. Linic is at the same time the president of INA's Supervisory Board. INA's press release stressed that in each of its tasks, including the selection of the best offer for the upgrading of its refineries, INA's Board inspected the facts that contribute to the interest of the company and Croatia. In that regard, INA's Board, as the press release notes, unanimously selected the Lummus Global company as the best tender with the best intentions seeing that it was in deed the most favourable offer both for the company and its owner. Everything else is ill-intended speculation, regardless of who is behind the insinuations, officials at INA claimed. INA officials also reminded that the company had realised a profit for the second year in a row and that this profit for 2002 will amount to around 140 million euros and that over 1.6 billion euros would be invested. The value of INA in the forthcoming privatisation has been increased from US$700 million to $1.5 billion. (Hina) sp it