"You know everything about the time when you were not a member of government and the HFP Steering Board, yet you don't know anything about decisions made during the term of the incumbent government," Vesna Pusic of the HNS told Deputy PM Damir Polancec.
Biserka Perman of the SDP asked why PM Ivo Sanader was relieving his ministers of responsibility, which she said was not criminal, but was moral and material responsibility. She added that one of the tasks of the HFP Steering Board was to know what was going on in the HFP.
"We removed politics from where it did not belong," Finance Minister Ivan Suker responded, adding that a few hours after Chief State Prosecutor Mladen Bajic had asked the government for five million kuna, the money was transferred to the bank account of the Office for the Suppression of Corruption and Organised Crime (USKOK).
"Should I have asked him what he intended to do with that money?" Suker said.
Damir Kajin of the Istrian Democratic Party (IDS) said that the anti-corruption operation "Maestro" was one of the ways to audit the privatisation process.
"The first part of the job was done by the police, and now it's the judiciary's turn, which is why I am worried because some judges depend on big money," Kajin said.
Andrija Hebrang of the HDZ said that the request by the HNS and the SDP was a message to criminals that they enjoy protection in parliament, while Darko Milinovic (HDZ) called the request a political debacle that was the result of a leadership crisis in the Opposition.
Antun Kapraljevic (HNS) countered by saying that he still did not believe in the implementation of the national anti-corruption programme, saying that of 176 anti-corruption measures that should have been implemented until now, only 36 had been implemented.
Speaking about the operation "Maestro", Justice Minister Ana Lovrin said that the government and its ministers were being criticised for not having known about something which under the law they were not allowed to know.
She recalled that it was the incumbent government that had proposed laws which provided a legislative framework and strengthened, financially and in terms of personnel, state institutions, the Office of the Chief State Prosecutor and USKOK, so that they could do their job independent of political influence.