While Prime Minister Plenković lectures on transparency, Lika has been left to criminal activity with hazardous waste for a decade, now threatening the health of 12,000 people and forever tarnishing the region's eco-clean brand.
While the cry of "potatoes, potatoes!" echoes from a white van through Zagreb's streets and customers rush for a bag of the famous Lika potato, few pause to consider what lies beneath the soil from which that potato comes. Lika, a region known for its lamb, škripavac cheese, and pristine nature, has been systematically poisoned for ten years with thousands of tons of hazardous waste, while the state system under HDZ control has done nothing.
According to Telegram.hr's report from August 11, 2026, a staggering 37,000 tons of toxic substances from abroad were brought to and buried at a landfill in the Gospić area. Transporting this alarming amount required around 1,500 trucks that rumbled unimpeded toward the Gospić complex for years, with no one stopping them or checking what they carried.
The key figure in this cover-up was Chief State Inspector Andrija Mikulić, appointed by none other than Prime Minister Andrej Plenković. Telegram reports that Mikulić "allowed himself to be greased to look the other way," while all other protective mechanisms of the HDZ-run system failed to the point of absurdity. For a full decade, illegal imports and concealment of hazardous waste continued, while warnings from citizens and environmental organizations fell on deaf ears.
While HDZ spent the summer "feigning outrage and hysterics" over five new underground waste bins in Zagreb under Mayor Tomašević, there was no political will to address the ecological catastrophe in Lika, which is thousands of times more dangerous. Prime Minister Plenković now points the public to the proceedings at DORH, which is to prosecute the Šincek spouses and their network of associates, calling them crooks and criminals.
"This is, of course, another fraud and deception, because the state exists precisely to protect citizens from crooks and criminals that can breed anywhere, and here the state and Plenković's government behaved as if the problem didn't exist," reads Telegram's analysis. No citizen or businessperson can simply dump a truckload into the environment, yet for 1,500 trucks of poison, no one asked where they came from or what they were unloading.
The Šinceks, it is noted, are irrelevant here, even though they engaged in criminal business. What matters is the system that doesn't work, that is corrupt to the core, and whose ministers have thick skins. "They have irreversibly destroyed Lika's nature and endangered people. Exactly them. Those who allowed the Šinceks to develop their dirty business, because without them, the Šinceks wouldn't have existed," the text concludes.
Around 12,000 people living in the wider Gospić area, where the epicenter of pollution is, must now fear for their health and lives. Official expert assessment has warned that the compounds found are extremely dangerous to humans and all living beings, and in humans can cause various types of cancer and attack the nervous, cardiovascular, and immune systems.
Through underground water flows, the poisons can spread across the entire area, reaching the coast near Senj and the islands that depend on water from the karst hinterland during the summer. Lika, otherwise the least populated region with ten souls per square kilometer, has lost its most precious asset for the future-clean and untouched nature as a prerequisite for organic farming, livestock, and tourism.
The honorary status of Lika potato, lamb, and škripavac as permanently protected Croatian products in the European Union catalog now sounds like a mockery. Who, in their right mind, would still buy anything from local Lika products without thinking about water and soil contaminated with carcinogenic substances? The potential of Plitvice Lakes and Velebit is now overshadowed by ecological catastrophe.
"It's hard to stomach listening to Plenković from Sinj lecturing on transparency and the law," the analysis concludes. An entire region now must fear drinking water, eating a pear from a tree, and worry that their children will give birth to sick grandchildren. Lika, as stated, has become a disease of the system and this political class that enabled the Šinceks to develop their dirty business.
