ZAGREB, 23 June, 2021 - Documents that were confiscated from the Dubrovnik State Archives and were found in the Salzburg Diocese Archives were handed over on Wednesday in the presence of Croatia's Minister of Culture and Media Nina Obuljen Koržinek and Croatia's Ambassador to Austria Danijel Glunčić.

The operation ended successfully with the return of Croatia's cultural heritage, Minister Obuljen Koržinek said, noting this isn't the first or last time this has been done.

Ambassador Glunčić underscored that the Salzburg Diocese had full understanding that the medieval documents could not be considered to be part of Austria's or Salzburg's history.

The documents involved are two pontifical documents which the diocese was immediately prepared to return to Croatia, and this was also approved by Austria's state authorities, he said, adding that the documents will be placed in Dubrovnik's Archives.

Police working on issues related to cultural heritage

Police Director Nikola Milina said that the police were working on cultural heritage issues, adding that they have had good results so far.

A soon as the information was released, the Croatian police contacted the police in Austria and the documents were quickly identified which led to them being returned, he said.

Digitalisation to facilitate return of other missing documents

Director of Dubrovnik State Archives Nikolina Pozniak is convinced that digitisation will contribute to other documents that have gone missing from the archives and other institutions to be returned.

The head of the archive's collection, Zoran Perović, explained that the documents returned today are two pontifical bulls dated 1189 and 1252. The first notes that the Pope is deploying Archbishop Bernard to Dubrovnik while the other bull refers to the appointment of an archbishop to be a judge in a dispute between the Bar and Dubrovnik Archdioceses.

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Croatian national security is at stake because criminal organizations have infiltrated the MUP identity document issuing system, which stores the personal information of Croatian citizens and residents, according to Željko Cvrtila, a national security expert and former police chief.

"Low wages, lack of internal oversight, political recruiting, and the interference of politics and money within MUP (Croatia Ministry of the Interior) are the main reasons for the appearance of Croatian identity documents on the illegal market," he added during a brief interview to Renata Škudar/Nacional on November 29, 2019.

Is Croatia's national security at stake?

“This is endangering national security, because Croatia’s document issuing system has been infiltrated, and a lot of original identity cards and passports have fallen into the hands of criminal organizations. The system has been penetrated because the intelligence and security networks in our neighboring eastern states are connected to criminal organizations in these countries and with criminal groups in Croatia. All of this is happening on Croatian territory and that is our biggest problem."

How did so many Croatian documents appear on the illegal market?

"The MUP system is intertwined with various political lobbies and people who are not subject to internal oversight. Procedures are not being properly implemented and the people in charge of these systems are not doing their jobs. There is a lack of oversight regarding employee resources and criminal organizations can easily exert their influence in such a permeable system. The system only works when corrupt politicians and the mafia aren't interfering in politics and business, or providing and returning favors. Otherwise, we’ll have chaos where crime reigns,” concluded Cvrtila.

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