Zagreb Mayor Addresses Official's Alleged Misuse of Private Data in Lawsuit

Zagreb Mayor Tomislav Tomašević has responded to accusations that a city official misused private data from official archives for a personal legal battle. The case, reported by the weekly Nacional, involves Klaudija Matuč, a former city employee, who filed a complaint against Vera Marelja, head of the City Office for Internal Audit and Control.

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You didn't say whether this is information that can be obtained through the right to access information? This is not sensitive information that only certain people can access.

Matuč alleges that Marelja obtained and used Matuč's personal data from city files in a private defamation lawsuit. Tomašević addressed the claims, questioning whether the information accessed was subject to public access laws, suggesting it was not sensitive. He also refuted a key assertion in the article regarding the evaluation of deputies.

"You didn't say whether this is information that can be obtained through the right to access information? This is not sensitive information that only certain people can access," Tomašević stated. He further clarified that the claim about performance evaluations being illegally transferred from the mayor to department heads was incorrect. He asserted that such evaluations were handled by the department head alone in 2024, a practice supported by inspection guidelines.

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Another thing that was stated in that article, which is key, is what is claimed that the evaluation of the deputy by the mayor was illegally transferred from the department head. That is not true.

The mayor emphasized that the core of the issue lies with the former deputy, who was appointed during the previous mayor's tenure and sued her superior for defamation over an evaluation. Tomašević presented this as the central point of contention in the case.

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What is the key thing is that this former deputy was appointed during the time of the former mayor Bandić, sued her head for defamation because of the evaluation. That is key.