Šincek's Trucks Also Dumped Waste in Senj
USKOK has extended its investigation to the Sveti Juraj landfill, where residents claim they had been warning about suspicious dumping for years while trucks ran all night.
USKOK has extended its investigation to the Sveti Juraj landfill, where residents claim they had been warning about suspicious dumping for years while trucks ran all night.
In February this year, USKOK extended its investigation into the Šincek couple and 11 other individuals as well as five companies to the area of Senj, specifically the local Sveti Juraj waste landfill. Investigators suspect that Josip and Monika Šincek were unloading large quantities of hazardous waste at the landfill instead of the inert material stipulated in the contract.
According to unofficial information obtained by 24sata, USKOK suspects that instead of soil, crushed concrete, and bricks, they were delivering crushed plastic, metal, and other waste containing hazardous and harmful substances. Monika Šincek allegedly altered documents to make the waste appear as soil and crushed concrete in records, and one of the GKD Senj workers was also falsely signed.
24sata has obtained the contract between Tipos Resursi, Josip Šincek's company, and GKD Senj, signed on February 11, 2020. Under this contract, Tipos Resursi was required to provide a waste sorting machine, separate raw materials for its construction material from plastic and concrete, and leave the rest at the Sveti Juraj landfill. GKD Senj undertook to accept four thousand tons of inert material used for covering municipal waste.
On April 30, 2021, the contract was terminated unilaterally because Tipos Resursi failed to respond to GKD Senj's inquiries. However, the duration of the contract became a contentious issue. Snježa Tomljanović, director of GKD Senj, who also signed the disputed contract, stated at a March 2025 session of the local committee that the contract lasted a month or two, and on March 29, 2025, on HRT's Dnevnik, she mentioned it lasted 6 months. Only after independent councilor Hrvoje Bezjak sued the information commissioner did it emerge that the contract had lasted 14 months.
Residents of Senj claim they had been warning about suspicious waste dumping for years, but their complaints were ignored. One resident, who has lived in Senj his entire life, described what he had been witnessing near the landfill for years.
"They drove all night, and during the day, from somewhere. The communal company has three trucks; they bring 24 loads overnight. So, in the evening there are four or five piles, and in the morning 20,000," the resident told N1 reporter Katarina Plantak.
He added that he fears for the health of people living nearby, especially children. "Of course I'm afraid, I've been here 67 years since birth. I have two sons; luckily one is in Zadar, one in Zagreb. But these people here have small children of five, six, ten years old. They defend what we're doing, they defend it. But their children live here. I don't care, I'm old, but their children will get poisoned," he commented.
According to his estimate, 13-15 percent of the population has contracted cancer.
Hrvoje Bezjak, an independent city councilor and now a member of Most, had been warning about the problem for years. According to his data, the landfill's capacity in 2019 was 101,000 tons, and by 2022 it was only 12,500 tons.
"The difference is 88,000 tons in three years. And I want to know what was all brought here," Bezjak said.
According to official city data, between 3,000 and 3,500 tons of waste were brought to the landfill each year. USKOK mentions 2,640 tons of disposed waste, but Bezjak believes there is much more.
"We believe there is much more here because we all saw those trucks coming and going. Some talk about ten thousand tons and about trucks dumping in the crevices, not just at the landfill," Bezjak said.
Snježa Tomljanović, director of GKD Senj, sued Bezjak for defamation because he called the dumping of hazardous waste an ecocide and mentioned "criminal association," a term also used by USKOK. The second hearing in that lawsuit is scheduled for April 1.
Bezjak described how he obtained the contract. At the City Council session on February 21, 2025, he asked then-mayor Jurica Tomljanović whether GKD Senj had a contract with Tipos Resursi. The mayor replied that "in the past four years since I've been mayor and since GKD has been led by director Snježa Tomljanović, there has been no contract." After three months of back-and-forth, Bezjak sued the information commissioner and obtained the contract, which shows it lasted 14 months.
Matija Stevanović, Monika Šincek's brother and Josip Šincek's brother-in-law, was taken into custody on Monday, questioned by USKOK in Rijeka, and released to defend himself from freedom. This turns the investigation into the dumping of at least 37,500 tons of hazardous plastic and medical waste in Gospić, Benkovac, Varaždin, and Senj into an investigation of a family business.
The investigation involves a total of 18 suspects, including 13 individuals and five companies.
The contract was signed while Sanjin Rukavina was mayor, and he, as a member of HDZ, moved to the Ministry of Justice, Administration, and Digital Transformation in September 2020 to take the position of state secretary. He did not respond to calls from 24sata, and a reply to an SMS asking whether he had favored Šincek's company with this contract did not arrive by the time of publication.
Željko Tomljanović, the mayor of Senj elected in 2025, confirmed that the contract with the Šinceks existed and was terminated after 14 months due to non-fulfillment of obligations. The City of Senj has not yet officially received documentation about the investigation from USKOK, but they have requested a statement.
"Given the situation in Gospić and the expert findings, the citizens of Senj are rightly concerned," Tomljanović said.
