ZAGREB BUSINESSMAN PETRAC IN POLICE HEADQUARTERS

ZAGREB/ZABOK (Hina) - Zagreb businessman Hrvoje Petrac, after whom Croatian police searched for more than one year, was taken to the headquarters of the Zagreb police on Monday, the acting director of the USKOK (the Office for Combating Organised Crime), Marinka Orlic, said today. #L# Orlic told reporter that she did not know under which circumstance Petrac had arrived in the Zagreb crime police offices. "I still do not know whether Petrac was arrested at the border or whether he had come into the police station on his own," she told Hina. The police of Krapina-Zagorje County reported that they had apprehended H.P (aged 47) at the Macelj border crossing shortly after 10 o'clock Monday morning, as Zagreb police issued a warrant for his arrest. The Krapina police published only the initials of the arrested man and said they had escorted him to Zagreb for an interrogation. Petrac's lawyer, Marijan Pedisic, said his client had not been nabbed but had turned himself to the police on his own "after he was treated in hospital abroad for some time and after his health improved." The Croatian media links Petrac to organised crime. The Zagreb police issued the internal warrant for his arrest in order to question him about his knowledge of the circumstance of last year's assassination of Vjeko Slisko, who is believed to have been the boss of one group of the Zagreb underground. Orlic said the USKOK was also interested in questioning Petrac and it would probably interrogate him as well. The USKOK wants to question him about the transcripts, published by some media, of the talks he held in 1999 and 2000 on the smuggling of cigarettes. The USKOK does not yet have any evidence which may incriminate him, as nothing has been proved from those transcripts to date. Everything is being checked at the international levels, the USKOK head said. (hina) ms