Toni Cetinski Faces Zagreb Court Over Fake COVID Pass
Toni Cetinski testified in his own defense today at the Zagreb County Court, one of only five defendants who refused a plea deal in a fake COVID pass affair involving over 230 people.
Croatian singer Toni Cetinski appeared before the Zagreb County Court today, September 4, to present his defense in a case built on allegations that he used a fake proof of COVID-19 vaccination. He is one of just five defendants who chose to contest the charges in court, while nearly two hundred other people caught up in the same affair have already accepted plea deals with prosecutors.
The case grew out of a sprawling investigation by Croatia’s Office for the Suppression of Corruption and Organized Crime (USKOK), which filed 15 indictments against more than 230 people accused of paying bribes to have fake vaccination records entered into the system. Cetinski was indicted back in January 2024 and has flatly denied any wrongdoing from the start. While most of the defendants opted to pay a fine or accept a suspended sentence rather than face a lengthy trial, the singer chose the opposite path, pushing the case toward a full court verdict.
Cetinski has repeatedly said in public that he never bought the disputed certificate and never wanted one. He has claimed people offered it to him almost every day, and that he turned them down every time. That is precisely where his defense runs into trouble with documents that have since entered the court file.
According to records from the state agency AKD submitted to the court, Cetinski’s COVID pass was issued on November 8, 2021. The certificate itself states that he was vaccinated on October 1 of that year, a full month earlier. That detail sits awkwardly next to his claim that he never wanted the document in the first place.
A further problem for the defense is what happened to the certificate after it was issued. According to an official report from the police Organized Crime Service, a review of the Interior Ministry’s National Information System for State Border Management found that Cetinski used the disputed pass three times at border crossings. The first use was recorded on December 4, 2021, at the Slavonski Brod crossing. The second came on February 15, 2022, at Bajakovo, and the third on March 4, 2022, at the Orah (Orahovlje) crossing.
Behind the whole network, according to the USKOK indictment, was a former nurse named Petra Markovic (formerly Rumiha), who worked at the West Zagreb Health Center. She has since admitted guilt and reached a plea deal with prosecutors. She was sentenced to two and a half years, partially suspended, along with a fine of 15,000 euros, and was ordered to repay 22,600 euros in illegally earned income. Both outlets following the case, Mondo and Republika, report the identical sentence, with no discrepancy in either the amount or the type of punishment.
According to the indictment, Markovic spent 2021 entering false vaccination data into the Health Ministry’s information system for people who had not actually been vaccinated, letting them obtain digital COVID passes. Her associates charged at least 100 euros per person for the service, the indictment states. Strikingly, she carried out most of that work while officially on sick leave.
While the overwhelming majority of defendants in the affair chose to admit responsibility and close the matter, Toni Cetinski continues to insist he is a victim of circumstance rather than a participant in organized fraud. It remains for the court to determine how the certificate ended up in his possession at all, and why, despite his claims that he never wanted it, it was used three times at Croatian border crossings. Prosecutors continue to view the case as part of a wider network of fake vaccinations, while the defense is trying to explain the documents in the file in a way that does not undercut Cetinski’s account.
