Croatia jails top cop for stealing gold, money

ZAGREB: A Zagreb court on Tuesday sentenced a former senior police officer to six years in jail for stealing gold and hundreds of thousands of euros (dollars) at the Croatian capital´s police headquarters.

The tribunal found Zeljko Dolacki, former head of the organised crime police unit, guilty of stealing two kilograms of gold from a police safe and nearly 380,000 euros ($434,000) in cash, pretending it was a robbery. Neither the gold or money has so far been recovered. Judge Maja Stampar Stipic ruled that in addition to the jail time, Dolacki also has to return 445,000 euros.

Dolacki "took advantage of the fact that temporarily seized items from several criminal cases were at his disposal" and stole them from February 2015 to April 2016, the indictment said. Dolacki, who was not present at Tuesday´s hearing, had pleaded not guilty. "If I was a dirty cop I would have taken the money earlier since during my career 200 million euros passed through my hands," he said earlier during the trial. The prosecutors warned that Dolacki had "betrayed the trust of all Croatian citizens and gravely ashamed the whole police."