Investigation documents reveal how CE-ZA-R, part of the C.I.O.S. Group, paid the small firm Tipos Resurs €50 per ton for plastic collection, while Darko Milinović demands the names of all companies involved be made public.
The question of accountability for large Croatian companies in the waste management chain has come to the forefront after Darko Milinović called for full transparency on RTL Direkt. He questioned why the public doesn't know which companies from Croatia, Italy, Germany, and Slovenia sold the waste and who stands behind them.
"Why isn't it in Croatia's interest to say which company in Italy, which in Germany, which in Slovenia, and which in Croatia sold that waste and who the owners are? Let the state attorney publish that too," Milinović urged. His question gains weight when examining the domestic business chain emerging from the investigation.
At the center of attention is the relationship between the large company CE-ZA-R, the biggest component of the C.I.O.S. Group linked to Petar Pripuz, and the relatively small enterprise Tipos Resurs. According to investigation data released by USKOK, Josip Šincek contracted with CE-ZA-R to take over plastic at a price of €50 per ton.
Tipos Resurs benefited by at least €465,000 from CE-ZA-R's payments for accepting this waste, which investigators suspect was illegally disposed of in the environment. In USKOK's publicly released record, CE-ZA-R is explicitly named as an entity in the chain of waste delivery to Tipos Resurs.
Although no one claims that CE-ZA-R knew the waste would be illegally dumped or that it participated in a criminal operation, legitimate questions arise about the nature of this collaboration. It's unclear why Tipos Resurs was chosen, how long the partnership lasted, what quantities were taken over, who negotiated the deals, and what the economic logic of such a relationship was.
The main question is whether Tipos Resurs was merely a cost-effective subcontractor for large companies or constituted the final part of a larger chain. In such a system, major players could hand over problematic waste to a smaller company, after which it would disappear from their immediate business sphere.
The answer shouldn't be sought in speculation but in documents-contracts, invoices, quantity data, transporters, and communication between companies. These traces can reveal whether this was an ordinary business relationship or something requiring a much broader investigation.
