Darko Milinovic and Andrija Hebrang allegedly had their first falling out last year when Milinovic sacked Veceslav Bergman, the head of the Croatian Institute for Health InsuranceDarko Milinovic, the Minister of Health and Social Welfare and a member of the HDZ (Croatian Democratic Union) presidency could completely marginalise Andrija Hebrang's influence in the Croatian healthcare system by this autumn and overpower him within the HDZ. Milinovic wants to achieve this through new personnel shuffles at the top posts in Zagreb hospitals not already run by people close to him, which would formally put him in control of the hub of medical activity in the nation, at the personnel level still very much under Hebrang's sway.

It was mostly because of Milinovic, and not his defeat at the presidential elections in mid April, that Hebrang has announced his departure from active politics by the end of the year. His opponents claim that he has announced his departure because of the loss of influence on events in the healthcare system and over rumours that his enemies might try to compromise him with a scandal connected to the HPB bank. Nacional has learned from sources close to the HDZ that Milinovic has ambitions to take over the HDZ and assume the leadership of the conservative right wing of the party. They say Milinovic would only openly demonstrate this ambition if the HDZ lost the coming elections for Parliament. If that where to happen, Jadranka Kosor's chances of staying on at the helm of the party are deemed to be poor, and if Hebrang were to withdraw from the political scene, Vladimir Seks and Darko Milinovic would have the strongest influence on the party. Milinovic began undermining Hebrang's influence a year ago, and this week the process should reach its climax after an organisational reform of Zagreb hospitals is carried out.

New management teams will be organised in the frame of this reshuffle, and they will probably not include the current hospital directors, that are said to be close to Andrija Hebrang. They word is that Milinovic wants to move Zeljko Vidas from the post of director of Merkur Clinical Hospital and Zeljko Reiner from the same post at Rebro Hospital. The two are considered to be close to Hebrang. There is a logical explanation as to why Milinovic wants to disenfranchise them. It is said that Milinovic objects to the delays on the renovation of Merkur Clinical Hospital, ongoing since 2007 when the cornerstone was laid by then Prime Minister Ivo Sanader. The renovation of the hospital is behind schedule and more expensive than expected. A top-flight transplantation centre was to have been created there, but only the section dedicated to radiology, an area of medicine Hebrang is involved in, has been completed.

Even his enemies admit that Milinovic has succeeded in increasing the fund of money available for the treatment of rare diseases and transplantation, that he has forced the pharmaceutical industry to work with smaller retail margins, that he has succeeded in stopping the trend of growing hospital balance sheet losses, increased their budgets and reduced the real debt of the healthcare system - there were entirely opposite indicators during Hebrang's term at the helm of the Health Ministry.

The conflict between Milinovic and Hebrang became serious after Milinovic sacked the head of the Croatian Institute for Health Insurance Veceslav Bergman in early 2009. Hebrang vehemently opposed the move. Milinovic felt that he had been personally admonished and said, "It's not my fault, you know Andrija that the two of us did not see eye to eye. To this Hebrang replied, "Dado, I did not even mention you. If you really could not work together, then perhaps it's best that he went..." Not long after Bergman was sacked Milinovic also dismissed Stjepan Bacic from the post of head of the board of directors of the Croatian Institute for Health Insurance. Milinovic appointed Drazen Jurkovic, a fellow native of Gospic who holds the post of State Secretary at the Health Ministry and is 100 percent loyal to Milinovic, to Bacic's seat.

Several influential physicians close to the Social Democratic Party have told Nacional that it is significant that Hebrang is being tight-lipped about what Milinovic is doing in the healthcare system, saying he would have labelled it political retribution had it been the work of the SDP.

Nacional has recently learned from Hebrang's opponents, both in the opposition and close to Government, of a rumour that brings Hebrang in connection with a scandal related to suspicious operations at the HPB bank that have of late been the subject of an USKOK investigation. The same source claims that this was also to a large extent why Hebrang has announced that he may retire from active politics. Hebrang's name is mentioned in testimony given by a witness USKOK investigators questioned on 13 April of this year. The witness was called in by investigators because he had wanted to sell a weekend house in Zdrelac on the island of Pasman to physician Goran Jurakovic for 700 thousand euro, who was to have paid for it via a company based in Spain with what is suspected to be money from a loan issued by the HPB bank. In the end the house, although built without permits, was purchased by Hebrang for 1.4 million kuna.

Hebrang is a long time friend of Jurakovic's, and is also acquainted with the seller of the weekend house. Hebrang floated the story of his possible retirement from the political scene through daily newspapers on 17 April, just four days after the person who sold him the house in question gave their testimony to USKOK investigators. Some of Hebrang's opponents say that this was why Darko Milinovic was pressuring Hebrang within the party, while others say that Milinovic has set his sights on one day taking control of the HDZ.