You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Croatian. (April 2024) Click [show] for important translation instructions.
|
The Office for the Suppression of Corruption and Organised Crime (Croatian: Ured za suzbijanje korupcije i organiziranog kriminaliteta), better known as USKOK, is a body of the Croatian criminal justice system, attached to the State's Attorney Office and specializing in investigations related to corruption and organized crime.
 USKOK's logo | |
| Bureau overview | |
|---|---|
| Formed | December 3, 2001 |
| Jurisdiction | Special body of State's Attorney Office of the Republic of Croatia specialized in fighting corruption and organized crime |
| Headquarters | Gajeva 30a, Zagreb, Croatia |
| Bureau executive | |
| Website | www.dorh.hr |
USKOK was formed in December 2001 and its headquarters are located in Zagreb.[1] The bureau's name is a bacronym from uskok, a term used for a type of Croatian militia men, who fought with guerilla tactics against the Ottoman Empire in the early 16th and 17th centuries.
Since 2009, USKOK has a counterpart in the Criminal Police Directorate (governing the Croatian Police) which has an (intentionally) very similar name – the National Police USKOK (Croatian: Policijski nacionalni USKOK), as well as in the judiciary – the Court Departments for Criminal Cases in the Jurisdiction of USKOK (Croatian: Sudski odjeli za postupanje u predmetima kaznenih djela iz nadležnosti USKOK-a).[2] Described as "one of the world's most formidable anti-corruption outfits", the agency has prosecuted 2,000 individuals and achieved a 95% conviction rate (2012), including former Prime Minister Ivo Sanader.[3]
In its 2014 EU Anti-Corruption report, the European Commission commended USKOK's ability to "carry out impartial investigations into allegations of corruption irrespective of the political affiliation or connections of those involved".[4] But in a subsequent report in 2017, the EC noted enduring problems concerning inter-institutional coordination, and called the overall effectiveness of the institutional framework into question.[5]
References
edit- ^ About USKOK (in Croatian)
- ^ "Antikorupcija: Izgradnja institucija zaduženih za suzbijanje korupcije" Archived 2011-07-17 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Kuris, Gabriel (7 August 2015). "The Little Anti-Corruption Agency That Could". Foreign Policy.
- Kuris, Gabriel (April 2013). "Cleaning House: Croatia Mops Up High-Level Corruption, 2005-2012". princeton.edu.
- ^ "ANNEX CROATIA to the EU Anti-Corruption Report" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2020-12-17.
- ^ "Corruption in the European Union" (PDF).
External links
edit- Official website (in Croatian)
 | This article about government in Croatia is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
 | This law enforcement agency article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |